Reliability Engineering and Risk Analysis

podcast episode with speaker Fred Schenkelberg

Risk is uncertainty. Will this work? How will this item fail? Is it safe? Risk is not limited to product failure, including brand topics such as market acceptance, regulatory approval, supply chain stability, international conflicts, and more. Reliability engineering tends to focus on product failure to perform as expected, and we must fit into the large context of risks facing any product or system. [Read more…]

Preventing Moisture and Corrosion Damage on Electronics in Harsh Conditions

podcast episode with speaker Dan Jenkins

The goal of this presentation is to educate the audience on options to prevent electronic equipment failure used in enclosed spaces from corrosion through preventative maintenance practices.    As most know, the metals used in today’s electronics are processed but want to turn back to their original state as the iron components will oxidize, and the corrosion process begins.  Adding humidity, vibration, temperature swings, and acid environments (such as being in a tire plant or downwind from a refinery) will accelerate the process.  It is this corrosion and subsequent weakening or disfiguring of the metal that causes malfunctions and failures [Read more…]

6 Essential Reliability Engineering Formulas

podcast episode with speaker Fred Schenkelberg

Dick Moss, retired HP Corporate Quality and Reliability Manager, once mentioned there are only five equations necessary to be a good reliability engineer. He quickly listed four equations and, with a smile, said the fifth one is the one you need to solve the current problem. [Read more…]

Essential Reliability Engineering Techniques

podcast episode with speaker Fred Schenkelberg

The difficult part of creating this list of essential techniques is to avoid selecting just the most common. There is an overlap between essential and those commonly used, yet essential implies a technique is crucial—crucial in rare yet very important situations. The idea for today’s discussion is to focus on those vital few techniques that every reliability engineer must master. [Read more…]

Practical Use of Stress-Strength Models to Develop Specifications

podcast episode with speaker Rob Schubert

Warranty returns are a great place to start for setting targets for new products. But how do you translate that to specific numbers to design to? If you know the strength of a product and the return rate, you can develop stress profiles. If you have multiple similar products, your estimates can be even better. From the profiles, targets can be developed for future products to meet and use them to calculate the expected return rates. You can even use these profiles to estimate the impact of design changes to warranty returns. [Read more…]

Essential Reliability Engineering Concepts

podcast episode with speaker Fred Schenkelberg

Everything will eventually fail. I like to say that keeps us in business as reliability engineers. The trick is knowing what will fail and when. There are many potential causes for a product or system to fail. Design flaws, supplied component latent defects, assembly damage, and unexpected applied stresses exist.

The key to take away from this concept is we can learn when studying failures. We can work to prevent or delay specific types of failures. By learning about failures, we learn how to create reliable products. [Read more…]

Selecting Reliability Engineering Tools

podcast episode with speaker Fred Schenkelberg

The toolbox for reliability engineering work is large. We have tools for risk management, data analysis, failure analysis, team building, and more. We touch on material science at the molecular level and then shift to assessing a vendor’s reliability program when you use which tool is critical to your effectiveness. So, how do you determine which tool to use for a given situation?

Let’s explore a few different situations and step through the decision process to determine which tool to employ. You may need to learn how to use a new tool or set of skills, modify how you use an existing tool, or apply what you already know how to do. [Read more…]

Overview of Life Testing in Minitab

podcast episode with speaker Rob Schubert

Many companies haven’t the resources to purchase much more expensive software specifically for reliability, but many have the quality software Minitab. Minitab has many reliability functions available; this presentation covers the basics, beginning with “individual distribution identification” to ensure your data fits one of the reliability models. Data is then analyzed with parametric distributions (right censoring vs arbitrary censoring). Additionally, the accelerated life testing functions are explored, focusing on interpreting the results. This is presented with practical examples for clarity. [Read more…]

What to Do About MTBF Use

podcast episode with speaker Fred Schenkelberg

While the NoMTBF movement is progressing, we still find those who want to use MTBF (or MTTF). As you know, MTxx-type metrics are means. They contain little information and are generally misunderstood and misused. So, what should a well-educated practitioner do? [Read more…]

Reliability Engineering versus Quality Engineering

podcast episode

I recently received a question about the differences and similarities and which discipline is better concerning reliability and quality engineering. Some say reliability is a characteristic of quality, while I say reliability is quality yet over time. [Read more…]

How to Learn Reliability Engineering

podcast episode

It’s impossible to point to one moment, class, seminar, workshop, or conference where I learned reliability engineering. Not one situation, project, conversation, or meeting, either. Learning reliability engineering is a journey, and each is different. [Read more…]