Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
You may fondly, or most likely not fondly, remember your undergraduate course on probability and statistics. The calculations of various winning hands with card games were interesting and connected to the early ‘invention’ of probability and statistical methods. Yet, the jar with colored beads was rather boring. [Read more…]
Accendo Reliability has been in the works for about ten years. Counting the various iterations in effect under different names and programs, it has been longer. The idea behind the site is to provide our community with great content to help you solve problems, learn, and improve. A close second concept is to provide a platform to help you share your knowledge.
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We always tell and listen to stories—anecdotes, encounters, best practices, near misses, memories, etc. We also influence how we interpret the world through the stories we tell ourselves. Plus, we often work to alter the stories others have in their head as we work to improve reliability. [Read more…]
Besides building your product inside your customer’s facility, your product will require some form of transportation to move from your factory to your customer. When your product doesn’t work ‘out of the box’, that is considered ‘not good’ for customer satisfaction.
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My guests Cheryl Tulkoff and Greg Caswell discuss their new book “DESIGN FOR EXCELLENCE IN ELECTRONICS MANUFACTURING” (published by Wiley and available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Wiley).
Cheryl Tulkoff may be reached here:
ctulkoff@gmail.com
Greg Caswell may be reached here:
greg.caswell@ansys.com
What role does ‘wishful thinking’ play in interpreting reliability test results? Hopefully, none. A well-designed test will likely provide meaningful results. You and your team may not like the results, yet the results will be clear. [Read more…]
A plan is a road map toward a destination. It provide guidance toward a goal. The idea of a plan is to consider the path forward, the knowledge necessary to acquire, and the decisions along the way.
No plan is perfect other than those that successfully accommodate the successes and setbacks along the way. No plan can anticipate all the information yet to be uncovered, yet it can set a course to deliberately uncover what is necessary to move forward.
Reliable products are also green. This is a relatively simple argument: If an item is designed and built well, it lasts a long time, thus avoiding landfills. Years ago, when living in northern Bavaria, the apartment had a full bedroom set. The entire set was both beautiful and functional. When asked about the furniture, I learned it was over 300 years old. [Read more…]
Reliability testing is expensive. For that expense, the testing results should provide timely, meaningful results. Results that provide actionable information and insights.
The idea of running a set of standard tests or tests that we ‘commonly run’ in many cases has little value. Each test (experiment) should be conducted for specific reasons related to the current project and current knowledge. [Read more…]
I often describe reliability work as we do everything quality does, and we do it over time. Quality folks may disagree. What is not in dispute is that in reliability engineering, we use a lot of different ‘quality’ tools. That is because many quality tools lend themselves to data analysis and problem-solving, [Read more…]
One of the very first plots to do with a string of data is a simple run plot. This plot provides information related to location, trends, patterns, and anomalies, The plot of the data over time is a rather informative chart.
You have most likely constructed many run charts; if not you really should. This short introduction to the run chart will cover creating and interpreting them. Plus we’ll mention a few cautions and tips, as well. [Read more…]
When a reliability engineer or manager does their job well, the product just works as expected. Maybe even a little better than expected. There isn’t any major problems that need a hero to resolve.
Work done well, may go unnoticed. To avoid that you need to master the art of promoting successes without coming across as bragging or boasting. For your career advancement, you need to be both successful and likable.
For your program and ability to influence outcomes, you also need to be seen as successful, valuable, and again likable. [Read more…]
Only some discussions about reliability go well. Some conversations make it obvious reliability is an afterthought or considered a barrier to creating and shipping products. Other conversations seem to support reliability work, yet really are little more than lip service. Then, there are meaningful conversations that improve the reliability culture within the organization. [Read more…]
Stratification implies layers or differences. A quick test for soil composition is to place a sample of soil with water in a clear jar and give it a shake. The sand, silt and loam will settle at different rates and create a layered appearance within the jar over time. The height of each layer provides information about the proportion of each type of soil within the sample.
Stratification as one of the seven basic quality tools (some lists use a run chart or flowchart instead) the idea of layers or differences still applies. The idea is to identify potentially meaning differences within a sample set. [Read more…]
While in the US Army many years ago, I took command of an artillery battery. My first day included sitting down with my boss, the battalion commander. I’ve used the advice he gave me every day since.
He said that I needed to make decisions. It’s great when they are good decisions, you can learn from decisions that don’t work out well. He also said the only thing not allowed is not making a decision.
I learned that decision-making is a process and that I could get better at it with practice and feedback, and I did. [Read more…]
