Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Kirk and Fred discussing the continued use of Reliability prediction and the very outdated government reference document, MIL HDBK 217.
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Reliability engineers have traditionally been asked to answer a common question during development of a new device or system, and that is “How long will it last?”.
It is the eternal question in equipment reliability development, and it really comes down to “that depends on many factors”. One question that needs to be asked is how long do you need it to, or should it last? [Read more…]
Kirk and Fred discussing the recent article Kirk and comments posted on LinkedIn regarding the estimated maintenance costs required for the F-35 Fighter Jet.
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Kirk and Fred discussing the issue of derating components to increase the reliability of the larger system. Although Fred and Kirk agree on most reliability topics, derating by the traditional reliability guidebooks is not one of them.
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Kirk and Fred discussing Kirk’s recent attendance at the Denver Pinball Showdown, a local Pinball conference and reliability.
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Kirk and Fred discussing the article that Fred recently posted and the strategy of making a spare parts and service a source of the majority of programs profit.
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I posted an article recently by Bloomberg on the Defense Department’s recent disclosure of the escalating support cost of the F-35 Joint Fighter Jet. With over 3,700 views, it was the most read of my posts. The original article on escalating F-35 reliability costs can be read at this link
I posted the article with the comment: “Once a test engineer working for a large DoD contractor once told me at a reliability conference, ‘These new reliability development techniques of HALT and HASS would be a lot easier to implement if spare parts and service did not constitute 60% of the total program profits.’ That was not the first time I have heard a similar comment from a test or reliability engineer or manager working in the defense industry. I believe these engineers working on the reliability end of the programs said these concerns me out of frustration. [Read more…]
Kirk and Fred discussing the question many have, that is if margins are important, why not specify more strength in the product design?
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Kirk and Fred discussing the common question in empirical limit testing (a.k.a HALT) that many design engineers have. How strength margins above specifications are important for long term reliability.
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Kirk and Fred discussing the Taguchi loss function and the problem of making it “in spec” but not on target.
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Kirk and Fred discussing the question of testing of reliability claims with the many variations of a specification, such as water resistance or any specific performance criteria.
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Kirk and Fred discussing the differences found between what is considered a “Quality” department issue, and what is a “Reliability” department issue.
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Kirk and Fred discussing the way quality and reliability are seen as different although both may cause the product to be considered a failure in the eyes of the customers.
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Kirk and Fred discussing the difficulty of getting the failed products, especially low cost systems, back from the field to do failure analysis on.
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Kirk and Fred discussing what Reliability Engineers do considering the past and current approaches to reliability development
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