On occasion, you and the team sit down to review the design.

The idea is to check the design for any issues with the combined wisdom of the people involved. Or, it may be a status update for the entire team providing a focus on the most important issues and action items.

The review may involve all departments, such as marketing, operations, supplier management, and the design team.

It may involve just you and the electrical engineer in a private meeting. In either case, it is a review and a chance to illuminate salient reliability issues and form a consensus on the appropriate action. [Read more…]

A plan is a guide or roadmap for intended action.

A reliability plan is also a collection of specific tasks and milestones and enhanced with a rationale to allow the entire team fully understand their role accomplishing the reliability objectives.

The plan is a way to achieve the desired business objectives. Meaning the product is reliable enough to meet customer expectations, minimize warranty expenses, and garner market acceptance. The plan is just a plan, it is the accomplishment of the tasks, the decision which improves the design, the signals monitored that stabilize the supply chain and assembly process, that make the difference.

A plan without action is not worth the effort. [Read more…]

Next week is RAMS – the Reliability and Maintainability Symposium. A multitrack 3.5-day conference with classes, tutorials, paper sessions, a small trade show, plus many of you – peers, colleagues, and friends in the reliability world.

The conference is hosted by 9 professional societies and organized by a group of about 50 or so volunteers from those societies (I was an active member of the RAMS management committee for many years). [Read more…]