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Fred Schenkelberg — Thought Leader

Author of CRE Preparation Notes, Musings", NoMTBF, multiple books & ebooks>, co-host on Speaking of Reliability>/a>, and speaker in the Accendo Reliability Webinar Series.


This author's archive lists contributions of articles and episodes.

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Reliability Apportionment

Reliability Apportionment

Diverging from reliability statistics for a post or two, let’s consider one way which R(t), reliability at time, t, is useful during the design phase of a product. Apportionment is the breakdown or allocation of reliability goals or objectives to elements within the product.

Overall, the product’s reliability is just one number, and it represents what the customer will experience with the product. During design, we often work on subsystems and components. Having a meaningful way to describe the reliability requirements that also assists the team to meet the overall product goal, is, well, useful. [Read more…]

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Role of Reliability Statistics

Role of Reliability Statistics

Generally, I do not talk about statistics before 10am – it’s not polite.

As a reliability professional, statistics is a central feature of the value I bring to the team. And, not just the reliability statistics, all stats. It continues to amaze me how many engineers, scientists, and professionals tend to avoid statistics. [Read more…]

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The Four Functions

The Four Functions

There are four functions related to life distributions of importance to reliability engineering.

Nearly all textbooks on reliability either introduce or use these functions. Likewise, nearly every calculation related to reliability statistics also uses at least one of functions.

Suppose we produced 100 units of a product and tracked them all till failure over time.

Eventually, all of them would fail. And, unlike the Parson’s One Hoss Shay the products and their components would not all fail at the same time.

One way to track the failures over time is to use a simple histogram.

By plotting the number of failures each month, for example, we would [Read more…]

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Basic Statistics

Basic Statistics

Understanding the math is critical not only for the exam, but it is also important for your ability to function as a reliability professional.

Most of us did not enjoy our undergraduate statistics course. It was just another course to endure as part of being in an engineering or science track.

The basic concepts and approaches to working with data are fundamental for some many situations. [Read more…]

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Engineering Management

Engineering Management

As 12%* of the CRE exam, this is a major section, yet not a very difficult one. There are three basic areas:

  • strategic management
  • reliability program management
  • ethics, safety, and reliability

If you’ve ever needed to secure funding or samples for a reliability test or had to respond to customer field returns, then you probably already understand the value of reliability.

In some businesses, product reliability is critical to the product’s success. Some businesses strive to be the leading ‘reliable’ producer in the market. [Read more…]

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Getting Started Preparing for the CRE Exam

Getting Started Preparing for the CRE Exam

I’ve learned a lot in my career and have attempted to help others to the best of my ability.

Teaching is fun.

It is also enjoyable to know a little of what I’ve learned from others may continue to be passed along.

The ASQ CRE certification is a milestone in a reliability engineer’s career. It is not an end nor a beginning, just a milestone to mark the achievement.

The CRE BOK encompasses a broad range of concepts and tools.

Passing the exam marks the person as having mastered the body of knowledge as laid out in the ASQ CRE BOK.

[Read more…]