Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Recently one of the CRE Preparation course students sat for the ASQ CRE exam at one of the Prometrics testing centers.
She passed – which is great, and she knew this as she received grading immediately after finishing the exam.
That is a new and nice feature. What we do not know if what happens if you do not pass.
Do you get feedback in a meaningful manner?
Here are a few other notes on the exam experience Raye reported. [Read more…]
One of my favorite things to do when visiting a new company, it at lunch or during a break, ask:
“Any major disasters that impacted reliability?”
Typically, there are three stories that start with, “Remember the… “, or, “One time…”
It seems every organization has legendary stories in the organizational memory. [Read more…]
Image that. Customers say one thing and expect something else.
A customer may provide a detailed and complete reliability specification, then, 6 months into using the product complain it is not reliable enough. [Read more…]
On page 6 of Statistics for Experimenters, Box, and Hunter suggest a scientist could conduct an investigation without statistics.
Whereas, a statistician could not do so without scientific knowledge.
The text’s discussion quickly expands on the benefits to a scientist when they do employ statistical thinking and tools.
Design of Experiments, DOE, is a set of statistical tools that allow an investigator to efficiently examine multiple factors and their associated influence on results.
DOE allows us to be better investigators. [Read more…]
A good plot reveals the data’s story.
Repairable system data is what is called by statisticians a renewal process.
The repair activity may restore the system to as good as new. Sometimes, the repair pretty much leaves the system in a state similar to just before the repair.
What happens most often, though, is the chance of system failure changes after each repair activity.
A simple plot can help us see what is happening. [Read more…]
Warranty is a part of doing business. Warranty management is not just the terms listed on the box.
Understanding the entire warranty process, along with your options, permits you to manage your warranty, rather than the other way around.
This is a short overview.
Pieces of a warranty program occur well before the first product ships and may affect the company bottom line for years after you ship your last product.
Brand promise, marketing, finance, customer service are not common areas for a reliability engineer.
Yet, the impact of product failures tends to dominant warranty expenses.
Therefore understanding the many elements around warranty management is essential for any reliability engineer. [Read more…]
In the last couple of weeks, I’ve received the same question a few times.
The CRE exam is perceived as a daunting task. One worth preparing well to be successful.
How do you prepare? What should you do to best prepare?
Let’s explore a few hints and tips that have been previously discussed here. [Read more…]
Upon my son’s return from studying abroad for a semester, I asked him what he learned. He said there are a lot of smart people in the world.
I concur. [Read more…]
The offered warranty is an internal part of many purchase decisions, plus many business models.
While obligatory to offer a warranty, especially for consumer products, the specific terms, duration, and eventual total cost of honoring warranty claims may vary dramatically.
One key to managing the overall warranty expense is to estimate the potential future warranty claims, followed by accurately tracking actual expenses during the warranty period. [Read more…]
During the design phase, we make decisions that create the eventual reliability performance of a product.
It is the decisions we make that matter.
Also during the design phase, we explore numerous questions. [Read more…]
We’ve collected data and it’s time for the analysis.
As you may recall, in the last article on Planning a Taguchi L4 Array Experiment, we drafted a set of four prototypes. The specific arrangement of factors and levels will now allow us to analyze each factor separately.
The intent is to find the optimal level or setting for each factor, plus which is the most important factor. [Read more…]
In deciding what industry you want to work as a reliability engineer, it is always good to have an understanding of what functional responsibilities you are expected to execute as a part of the job function.
You should always carefully review the job description then compare your knowledge acquired through training and on-the-job experience and ask yourself if you are capable of performing functions required without additional training.
Furthermore, we need to consider our technical limitations and at the same time be aware that the job description provided may not exclusive represents all the tasks you are expected to perform. [Read more…]
One of the simplest ways to learn design of experiments, DOE, is to just give it a try.
The Taguchi DOE approach uses orthogonal arrays. This subset of the possible approaches to DOE simplifies the process to create and analyze experiments.
Let’s plan a simple experiment using the Taguchi DOE approach. [Read more…]
It’s been almost a year since launching Accendo Reliability. It’s been fun, exciting, and weekly.
Love it and really enjoy helping you answer questions, get stuff done, and master reliability engineering.
Since my wife and I just bought a house (out playing Pokemon Go when we stopped for an open house – and a week later our offer was accepted). Now we’re preparing to move ourselves to our new home.
There is a lot involved. [Read more…]
When we understand how something fails, we can create a mathematical model of the effect of stress or load on the time to failure behavior.
The model may take different forms, yet it is the ability to related the conditions surrounding the use of a device to its eventual demise that is essential. The specifics include a molecular level of detail in some cases.
Physics of Failure models focus on the particular relationships between stresses and materials. [Read more…]