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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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Is a Professional Certification Worth It?

Is a Professional Certification Worth It?

The way we learn, prove our worth, and the nature of work are all changing. Professional societies are struggling to adjust to these changes. Universities and employers likewise are experimenting and exploring new ways to operate.

Over the past few months, I’ve received about a dozen inquiries on how to prepare for the ASQ Certified Reliability Engineer (CRE) exam in order to obtain the ASQ CRE certification. Many also asked if I had a course available. Thus, I decided to run a live course (learn more at the live course page – note: if you see this after the course start date we’ll have a sign up for those interested in future classes). [Read more…]

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3 Ways to Improve Your Reliability Thinking

3 Ways to Improve Your Reliability Thinking

I often joke that being a reliability engineer makes it difficult to get on an airplane. Yet air travel is by far the safest method of transportation. Maybe I just think about failure too much.

When a project manager views the day’s tasks, she sees timelines, connections, dependencies. When a marketing manager views a product idea, she sees benefits, sales channels, and profits. When a reliability engineer views a prototype, she sees the many ways it can fail.

Underlying how we view the world includes our assumptions, reasoning, and experience. We understand the world around us via the set of filters we use. We form conclusions and make decisions much the same way. Quickly and mostly automatically. [Read more…]

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Data Analysis and Questions to Answer

Data Analysis and Questions to Answer

One of my standing searches revealed an article that has shows a nice example of reliability data analysis. The author analyzed the time-to-violent-death of Roman emperors. The article is interesting in a historical sense plus illustrates a few key points for any life data analysis.

The article, “Statistical reliability analysis for the most dangerous occupation: Roman Emperor” by Joseph Homer Saleh takes a look at the 69 Roman emperors and 62% of them that suffered a violent death. The idea of the study was to determine if there is some pattern to the deaths and if the analysis would reveal any insights for those studying the era of the Roman emperors. [Read more…]

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How Much Reliability Data Is Enough?

How Much Reliability Data Is Enough?

Some may argue that just enough reliability data is just the right amount. Too much may lead to confusion, too little doesn’t inform well. The reliability work we do helps others make decisions, and recent work in how humans make decisions may help us prepare and present our results effectively.

If preparing reliability data-based recommendations, consider using less information. Ed O’Brien and Nadav Klein have found decision-makers tend to use much less data or information to make a decision than they think they will need.

If using data and the derived information to make a decision consider the situation carefully to know when to use a structured decision-making approach or to simply go with your gut. Daniel Kahneman and Gary Klein provide some insights and basic guidelines for decision making. [Read more…]

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5 Ways to Keep Your Audience’s Attention

5 Ways to Keep Your Audience’s Attention

I have found the best way to lose an audience is to focus on statistical derivation. While this is a fascinating subject for me, it just doesn’t seem to hold an audience’s attention.

Having something interesting and useful to say is key to maintaining an audience’s attention, yet at times how we present helps them become distracted.

So, given great content or proposal, how can you help your audience not quickly check their phone, yet again? [Read more…]

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Using a Strip Chart

Using a Strip Chart

Sometimes we just need a simple plot of a few data points. When there is scant data a histogram or box plot just is not informative. This is a great use for a one dimensional scatter plot, dot plot, or a what is called a strip chart in R.

The basic idea is to see where the data lines along a line. For example, let say we have 20 times to first failure. A table of numbers is not all that helpful. We could explore using a cumulative distribution plot (Weibull analysis), yet it would be difficult to fit a distribution with so little data.

Let’s turn to a strip chart to get a look at the data. [Read more…]

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Building a Frequency Table

Building a Frequency Table

In a meeting the other day, the presenter was talking about a range of different failures for the product in question. She talked about each issue, a bit about the failure analysis, yet didn’t reveal which failures occurred more or less often.

She did provide a handout with a listing of the problems in order of the product field age and listing of the failure name (component or system involved). So, I grabbed a piece of paper to create a frequency table so I could quickly determine which problems occurred more often than others. [Read more…]

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5 Steps to Create a Measles Chart

5 Steps to Create a Measles Chart

Measles Chart Basics

The clever Dr. John Snow mapped cholera cases during the epidemic of 1854 on a street map of the area. This type of mapping now called a measles chart, or defect location check sheet, or defect map, is useful when exploring the effect of location data.

The name measles chart may have come from the habit of using an image of drawing of a product and adding small red dots to signify defect locations.

[Read more…]

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Multi-voting: When More than One Vote is Better

Multi-voting: When More than One Vote is Better

In brainstorming, you may face a large number of unique ideas even after affinity diagraming. Multi-voting is a great tool to gain consensus on the top priority ideas with your team.

For less than 10 or so items we could use a rank ordering method, yet that method becomes cumbersome when there are a lot of items to prioritize. There are a couple of ways to conduct multiple-voting. Mastering this technique will help your team quickly focus on what is truly important. [Read more…]

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The Importance of a Reliability Engineering Community

The Importance of a Reliability Engineering Community

Years ago I was a part of a reliability engineering community and I had not met more than two or three members. This was before the internet and was using a new-fangled system called an email list.

At the time, it filled the role of helping me understand the many facets of reliability engineering. It helped me answer questions and allowed me to help others as well.

My desire is to help create more such communities that can help you and your organization improve the discussion concerning reliability. Let’s explore exactly how to make this work. [Read more…]

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Calculating the Probability of a Sample Containing Bad Parts

Calculating the Probability of a Sample Containing Bad Parts

Received a question from a reader this morning that will make a nice tutorial.

A box contains 27 black and 3 red balls.  A random sample of 5 balls is drawn without replacement.  What is the probability that the sample contains one red ball?

So here’s my thinking and two ways to solve this problem. Instead of red and black balls in an urn type problem, which is pretty abstract, let’s say we know 3 bad parts are in a bin of 30 total parts.

[Read more…]

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An Introduction to the Cause and Effect Diagram

An Introduction to the Cause and Effect Diagram

Also called the Ishikawa or fishbone diagram, the cause and effect diagram is a graphical tool that enables a team to identify, categorize, and examine possible causes related to an issue. The intent is to expose the most likely root causes for further investigation.

This diagram is part of a complex failure analysis process when there are many potential causes for the problem or condition. Similar to a brainstorm session about the problem, this graphical tool provides a bit of structure and may prompt additional potential causes.

The Ishikawa diagram is one of the seven basic tools of quality control. [Read more…]

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Mind Mapping for Non-Linear Thinking

Mind Mapping for Non-Linear Thinking

Sometimes a process doesn’t happen one step at a time. Sometimes, a problem we’re trying to solve has many moving and interacting elements.

Mind Mapping is a technique to capture those scattered thoughts, those non-linear processes, those myriads of interactions and dependencies. It’s a tool that is useful for brainstorming, organizing, and problem-solving. [Read more…]