Define Availability Uptime and Reliability to Get Them Right
Abstract
Adam and Fred discuss how important getting the definitions right to support decision making.
How to Build Your Influence as a Reliability Engineer
How to Build Your Influence as a Reliability Engineer
Good with data or failure analysis are elements of a great reliability engineer.
Another is the ability to influence. The perfect analysis and dynamic slide deck are not sufficient. You also must master the ability to persuade to influence.
10 Ways to Find Reliability Value
Most everyone agrees that improving a product or process reliability is a good thing. It’s good for customers, factories, and our business. And sometimes it’s difficult to answer the question,
‘What is the value of that reliability activity?’
What if your boss asks you what value you provide to the organization? Your answer may to harder to compose than you think.
How would you quantify your skills, experience, and knowledge and your role within the complex formal and informal working environments? [Read more…]
DFX as an Approach
When products were crafted one at a time, the design and manufacturing process was often done by the same person. The craftsman would design and build a chest of drawers or carriage.
Some trades would employ apprentices to learn the craft, which included design. Larger projects may include an architect or lead designer along with a team of engineers.
Yet the shop or site for the railroad engineer or bridge was not far allowing close communication between the ironsmith and design team. [Read more…]
5 Steps to Building a Reliability Culture
Reliability is not the sole responsibility of the reliability engineer but results from nearly everyone in an organization making decisions that move toward the desired product reliability performance.
As a reliability professional, I often find it necessary to explore ways to leverage my knowledge of these areas to change the culture within an organization to create a sustainable program that achieves reliable products time and again. [Read more…]
Descriptive Models of the Design Process
I’ve often said, “reliability occurs at the point of decision.”
At the point of design during the design process. At each and every decision.
The design team of engineers establishes the bulk of the reliability capability early in the design process. The team’s decisions about materials or shape, concerning inventions or outsourcing, about how and where to build the product, and many more decisions impact the final product’s reliability performance.
Reliability is designed into the product right from the start. [Read more…]
Show me the Data
Early in my career, I worked for an unreasonable person.
He wanted us, his engineering staff, to show him the data. He wanted us to gather, monitor, analyze and display data regularly. Anytime we needed approval, funding, or resources he wanted to see the data. [Read more…]
Understanding the Design Process
Let’s start by understanding the difference between engineers and engineering designers.
The work we do as reliability engineers may require a different approach when working with these different types of engineers. [Read more…]
The System Effectiveness Concept
Reliability is not the only concern when building a system.
Let’s consider a passenger car. Reliability refers to how often the car in the shop. How often we need to perform preventative or corrective maintenance. How often it fails. [Read more…]
Life Cycle Cost Analysis for a Reliability Engineer
Life Cycle Cost Analysis for a Reliability Engineer
The investment in creating a reliable product pays dividends during the operation of the equipment or system.
The ability to estimate future savings or costs based on reliability engineering is key. Minimizing lifecycle cost occurs with reliability.
Design for Assembly
The ability to assemble a system to meet the functional requirements is constrained by the design, the materials, and the tolerances.
Some designs are impossible to assembly. While other designs take little effort to build. The discipline of design for assembly, DFA, applied during the design process can enhance the manufacturing process. [Read more…]
The Environmental Test Manual
Let’s say you run across a lightweight, inexpensive, easy to manufacture metal that you are considering for a new bike frame. Beyond the functional considerations of strength, size, and finish options what else do you consider?
Is it durable? If it fails how does it fail (a shattering a bicycle frame would not be good, for example). You may also consider how the bicycle will be used and stored. What stress will the frame experience over its lifetime? [Read more…]
General Human Factors Design Principles
People build, transport, use, maintain and dispose of equipment or products.
Thus the creation of these items should include consideration of the humans involved. In order to fully benefit from the functional capability of an item or system, we, as humans, have to interact with an item’s interface, displays, sounds, etc.
Whether a smartphone or bottling machine, the ability to provide commands or direction, the ability to recognize and understand responses, and the ability to correctly identify faults or outputs all combine to permit humans to place calls or fill juice bottles.
It is in the design stage that the elements of a piece of equipment (hardware or software) thwart or enable efficient human interaction. [Read more…]
Electronics Failure Analysis Done the Right Way
“Failures are gold”
Early in my career the engineering manager relished discovering equipment failure.
It didn’t matter if it was human, electronic, mechanical or software in nature, the glint in his eye soon gave way to a flood of possibilities. He enjoyed the process of investigating the fundamental reasons a failure occurred. [Read more…]
Comparing Human and Machine Capability
In 1968 NASA explored where machines and humans would best achieve tasks primarily during space missions. Many of the findings are true today, and in some areas, the differences are blurring.
Machines created by humans continue to improve and take on complex tasks, that once only humans could do. For example, parking a car, now a feature of newer car models. Autonomous driving is happening and continuing to improve. The ability to reason, to foresee and evaluate risks, once thought to be strictly in the domain of human capability is now being done by machines. [Read more…]