This is the first annual survey to find what you recommend for those preparing for the ASQ CRE exam.
See the full list of reliability references for the CRE exam, for reliability and maintenance engineers at Accendo Reliability. [Read more…]
Product Reliability Design Guidelines
Product Reliability Design
One way to capture and disseminate reliability engineering related information and advice is through internal documents. This of course only works if they are both useful and used.
Focus on gathering and providing essential and meaningful information that will improve the reliability of your product. Another element that makes these design guidelines valuable is if they save time. Engineers love to save time. [Read more…]
Software Defect Phase Containment
Software Defect Phase Containment
The software element of products continues to grow.
Likewise, the number of field failures due to software issues continues to grow. Writing code is relatively straight forward, and some may even say it’s fun.
The process of debugging, or finding and fixing software defects, is not fun. [Read more…]
Approaches to Assess Customer Reliability Needs
Approaches to Assess Customer Reliability Needs
Just asking a customer how reliable they want your product often provokes an honest answer. The customer, and you most likely, do not want any failures.
Failures are troublesome or in some cases dangerous.
You and your customers realize that not every unit produced will operate over a long and useful life. There is some chance that something will fail. The definition of ‘some’ is often vague. [Read more…]
Reliability Role in Safety and Liability
Reliability Role in Safety and Liability
The reliability engineer may have many roles within an organization.
You may be specialized and focused only on the analysis of field data. Or you may be a member of the organization’s strategic leadership team.
You might support one or more product development teams, or work with a team of reliability professionals supporting just one subsystem. [Read more…]
Reliability Modeling using Monte Carlo
Modeling Complex Systems and Their Variability
Monte Carlo relies on data that describes the variation of elements within the system. It also connects the elements such that they result is an estimate of performance.
For reliability modeling, this is easiest to imagine for a series system.
For a system with two elements in series, a very simple reliability block diagram multiples the expected reliability for each block to determine the system reliability value. Yet, it is possible to have both elements at the low end of the range of possible reliability values, or the high end or a mix.
That is the value of the Monte Carlo approach. [Read more…]
Ethics and Your Work as a Reliability Engineer
Ethics relate to the moral correctness of a person’s behavior given the groups moral principles.
Society, in general, has a set of standard expectations to guide our behavior. This includes fundamentals such as not harming others or behaving in a deceitful manner.
Religious, professional and informal ‘codes’ document the set or principles which guide our behavior in line with moral correctness. [Read more…]
A Brief Introduction to Fault Tree Analysis
Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) is a technique to explore the many potential or actual causes of product or system failure.
Best applied when there are many possible ways something may fail. For example, when my car doesn’t start, it could be a dead battery, faulty started, loose wire, no fuel, and on and on. [Read more…]
2 Versions of Product Life Cycle Phases
Each organization creates their own version of a product life cycle.
Often there are phase gate reviews that signal a transition from one phase to the next. In general, each set of phases follows a common progression from idea to retirement.
There are many references that include a description of the life cycle phases, so let’s explore two of them. [Read more…]
Field Data and Reliability
Customers experience product failures.
Understanding these failures that occur in the hands of customers is an essential undertaking. We need this information to identify increasing failure rates, component batch or assembly errors, or design mistakes. [Read more…]
Success Testing Formula Derivation
The planning of environmental or reliability testing becomes a question of sample size at some point.
It’s probably the most common question I hear as a reliability engineer – how many samples do we need. [Read more…]
How Safe is Safe Enough for Your System?
Estimating the set of stress and stress curves is an interesting exercise that may have a greater purpose: safety.
The connection is clear when considering the potential consequences of failure.
For example, the loss of braking power when landing an aircraft may result in the aircraft rolling off the end of the runway. This could be into a river or road and may have a rather poor outcome not only for the aircraft. [Read more…]
The 2015 Recommended References Survey
Becoming an ASQ CRE is one milestone in your career. It involved gathering experience and studying the broad reliability engineering body of knowledge.
It also involved an ongoing application of what you know and learn. I’ve found being a reliability engineer involves learning about materials, designs, systems, people, and tools & techniques. Mastery takes time and a good library. [Read more…]
The Stress-Strength Concept in Practice
Ideally, in every design of every component, the stress–strength relationship looks like this figure. The stress is well below the strength.
This implies there is very little chance of failure due to the element being overstressed.
Also, ideally, we fully characterize all stresses and all strengths for each element of a product. This is generally difficult to accomplish and it is rarely done to that extent.
Does HALT Lead to Product Over-Design?
Every once in a while I see a comment that by following the HALT methodology you will “over design” a product.
Many question at what point or operational limit do you quit increasing the stress-strength margins. Those who hold this view of HALT do not understand the essence of what was Gregg Hobbs’ principles and paradigm shift. [Read more…]
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