Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
The reliability engineering discipline, like all fields of endeavor, is changing. The inclusion of risk management, the shift to proactively avoiding field failures, and the increasing use of sensors and models all make the future fascinating.
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The way we learn, prove our worth, and the nature of work are all changing. Professional societies are struggling to adjust to these changes. Universities and employers likewise are experimenting and exploring new ways to operate.
Over the past few months, I’ve received about a dozen inquiries on how to prepare for the ASQ Certified Reliability Engineer (CRE) exam in order to obtain the ASQ CRE certification. Many also asked if I had a course available. Thus, I decided to run a live course (learn more at the live course page – note: if you see this after the course start date we’ll have a sign up for those interested in future classes). [Read more…]
I often joke that being a reliability engineer makes it difficult to get on an airplane. Yet air travel is by far the safest method of transportation. Maybe I just think about failure too much.
When a project manager views the day’s tasks, she sees timelines, connections, dependencies. When a marketing manager views a product idea, she sees benefits, sales channels, and profits. When a reliability engineer views a prototype, she sees the many ways it can fail.
Underlying how we view the world includes our assumptions, reasoning, and experience. We understand the world around us via the set of filters we use. We form conclusions and make decisions much the same way. Quickly and mostly automatically. [Read more…]
One of my standing searches revealed an article that has shows a nice example of reliability data analysis. The author analyzed the time-to-violent-death of Roman emperors. The article is interesting in a historical sense plus illustrates a few key points for any life data analysis.
The article, “Statistical reliability analysis for the most dangerous occupation: Roman Emperor” by Joseph Homer Saleh takes a look at the 69 Roman emperors and 62% of them that suffered a violent death. The idea of the study was to determine if there is some pattern to the deaths and if the analysis would reveal any insights for those studying the era of the Roman emperors. [Read more…]
The reliability culture of an organization is about how individuals make decisions. It combines priorities & policies, behaviors & motivations, and information & capability. Understanding the current culture allows you to improve the culture.
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When you ‘pass’ a standard-based test, what does that mean? How can you use test results meaningfully besides just noting the product ‘passed’? Understanding the failure mechanisms at play, along with the statistics, is key. [Read more…]
Some may argue that just enough reliability data is just the right amount. Too much may lead to confusion, too little doesn’t inform well. The reliability work we do helps others make decisions, and recent work in how humans make decisions may help us prepare and present our results effectively.
If preparing reliability data-based recommendations, consider using less information. Ed O’Brien and Nadav Klein have found decision-makers tend to use much less data or information to make a decision than they think they will need.
If using data and the derived information to make a decision consider the situation carefully to know when to use a structured decision-making approach or to simply go with your gut. Daniel Kahneman and Gary Klein provide some insights and basic guidelines for decision making. [Read more…]
I have found the best way to lose an audience is to focus on statistical derivation. While this is a fascinating subject for me, it just doesn’t seem to hold an audience’s attention.
Having something interesting and useful to say is key to maintaining an audience’s attention, yet at times how we present helps them become distracted.
So, given great content or proposal, how can you help your audience not quickly check their phone, yet again? [Read more…]
Sometimes we just need a simple plot of a few data points. When there is scant data a histogram or box plot just is not informative. This is a great use for a one dimensional scatter plot, dot plot, or a what is called a strip chart in R.
The basic idea is to see where the data lines along a line. For example, let say we have 20 times to first failure. A table of numbers is not all that helpful. We could explore using a cumulative distribution plot (Weibull analysis), yet it would be difficult to fit a distribution with so little data.
Let’s turn to a strip chart to get a look at the data. [Read more…]
Graphics, when used well, can convey easy-to-understand information. Reliability graphics may focus on trends in failure rates or the verification of improvement work. Often, reliability graphics convey time-to-failure patterns.
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When a product or system fails, there is a consequence. Often, there is a loss of value. Each warranty replacement costs money. Downtime may result in lost revenue. Do you know the full extent of the costs involved when something fails?
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When we make a measurement, we make a decision based on the data provided. It’s important to have data close enough to the actual measurement. What is the measurement error if something is supposed to be 2 cm long and we measure it at 2.1 cm?
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Once a product is launched, it’s time to understand its performance. The design is done, and the assembly process is working. Now we can focus on answering the question: is the product hitting reliability targets or not?
Thus, we do field data analysis. [Read more…]
In a meeting the other day, the presenter was talking about a range of different failures for the product in question. She talked about each issue, a bit about the failure analysis, yet didn’t reveal which failures occurred more or less often.
She did provide a handout with a listing of the problems in order of the product field age and listing of the failure name (component or system involved). So, I grabbed a piece of paper to create a frequency table so I could quickly determine which problems occurred more often than others. [Read more…]
There are three approaches to setting tolerance limits for design elements. Each has ramifications for the eventual manufacturability and reliability performance—design for manufacturability and reliability hinges on correctly setting design tolerances. [Read more…]
