on Product Reliability

A listing in reverse chronological order of articles by:

Kirk Grey — Accelerated Reliability series

Les Warrington — Achieving the Benefits of Reliability series

Adam Bahret — Apex Ridge series

Michael Pfeifer — Metals Engineering and Product Reliability series

Fred Schenkelberg — Musings on Reliability and Maintenance series

Arthur Hart — Reliability Engineering Insights series

Chris Jackson — Reliability in Emerging Technology series

by Kirk Gray 9 Comments

Exposing a Reliability Conflict of Interest

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…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Discussion skills

Discussion Skills for a Reliability Engineer

Talking is not the same as a discussion or conversation. Talking is one direction only. If two people are talking, they are talking at each other.

A discussion is two way. When two people have a discussion information passes both ways, both speak, both listen.

As an engineer, there is plenty to discuss. We work with others to find solutions, make compromises, determine optimizations, and finish projects. We need to share our knowledge and insights, as well as learn from others.

You can learn to foster true discussions and minimize simply talking at one another. You can take steps to enable the give and take exchange of a discussion. [Read more…]

by Christopher Jackson Leave a Comment

Autonomous Vehicle Regulation

could less actually be more?

Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) are still futuristic – but there are plenty of people are thinking about them and what they would mean – particularly as they relate to safety. And when they do, they invariably think about how vehicles are currently regulated as a starting point.

We envisage perhaps more autonomous vehicle regulation, standards and rules – because AVs are more complex and complicated. But for every regulation, standard and rule, we take responsibility away from the manufacturer.

Why? Because all the manufacturer needs to do is ensure that their AV meets each regulation, standard and rule for them to not be liable for subsequent accidents (this is a simplistic interpretation to be sure … but satisfactory for the sake of this article).

Is this desirable? Is this possible?

[Read more…]

by Adam Bahret 1 Comment

Software Design For Reliability

With all the complaints you hear about products rebooting and software crashing, do companies really practice Software Reliability? In fact, there are some companies that do, but they are mostly in the industries that require products to have high availability, such as telecom, defense, and space, or safety-averse industries, such as medical and industrial plant operation. Most other industries don’t pay as much attention to it. The best method to increase Software Reliability without significant increases to schedules or budgets is to use a Software Design for Reliability (SDFR) approach. These are the key steps. [Read more…]

by Christopher Jackson Leave a Comment

Red Flags and Autonomous System Safety

and the importance of looking back before looking forward

Have we gone through the introduction of autonomous vehicles before? In other words, have we gone through the introduction of a new, potentially hazardous but wonderfully promising technology?

Of course we have. Many times. And we make many of the same mistakes each time.

When the first automobiles were introduced in the 1800s, mild legislative hysteria ensued. A flurry of ‘red flag’ traffic acts were passed in both the United Kingdom and the United States. Many of these acts required self-propelled locomotives to have at least three people operating them, travel no greater than four miles per hour, and have someone (on foot) carry a red flag around 60 yards in front. [Read more…]

by Adam Bahret Leave a Comment

Old Requirements Making a Come Back in Future Endevours

The original windmills of Europe are feats of engineering. I was able to get inside of a few in Holland and see all the mechanisms that have been operating for hundreds of years. I was lucky that the wind was strong and the windmills had their sails out the days I was visiting. A few were grinding flax seed and others designed to pump water from a low basin to a high basin to control basin water levels. Being inside of the windmill was like being an insect inside of a grandfather clock. It was so interesting seeing how they engineered the mechanisms to optimize the balance of the system needs in such a different manner than we do with many of our currently engineered products. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 1 Comment

Listening Skills for Reliability Engineers

Listening Skills to Improve Your Ability to Communicate with Influence

Did you hear what they said? Or, were you busy loading for your next verbal barrage?

As my mother would remind me, one should listen twice of often as speaking. Something about the ratio of ears to mouths in the population. I have to agree with her, that one can learn a lot by listening.

Listening may not seem to be a skill that one needs to master. Yet, how often have you walked away from a meeting where one or more participants obviously were not listening? How often are points repeated in an effort to be heard?

Being able to listen, listen well, can be honed and improved. A focus on being a better listener will improve your ability to communicate and influence as a reliability engineer. It has benefits beyond our reliability work, too. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Writing Skills

Technical Writing Skills for Reliability Engineers

Your peers, team mates, and management want to understand your writing. They want to quickly get your point, find supporting information, and take action.

As a reliability engineer, you write proposals, plans, and reports. You write problem statements, failure analysis findings, recommended process improvements, and much more.

You write to document a process or plan. More often you write to encourage others to take action.

Writing clear, concise missives the incite action is a hallmark of a good reliability engineer. You are doing technical writing.

You can learn to write well. [Read more…]

by Adam Bahret Leave a Comment

Selecting the wrong ALT model

Many product programs ( actually all) are on a tight schedule. When Accelerated Life Testing (ALT) get’s it’s place in the process it is another mouth to feed. ALT is not a short process. Each round of testing typically takes weeks, and the results may drive design changes that prescribe additional testing. It is common to want to get the ALT process going as quickly as possible. In this haste the primary wear-out failure modes and it’s driving stresses are confidently stated, a model is created, and the test is started.

[Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

The Ability to Influence

The Ability to Influence Reliability Performance and Results

The role of a reliability engineer is to support the other engineers and managers as they make decisions concerning reliability.

Our ability may be well honed and effective. Or it may be fumbling or annoying. It is our ability to communicate along with our technical ability that determine our ability to influence well.

We may do analysis or testing. We follow up on failures and evaluate suppliers. What we actually are doing is influencing decisions. [Read more…]

by Adam Bahret Leave a Comment

Why can’t we shake off MTBF?

Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) is one of the most well know reliability metrics.

But to anyone who works with reliability, it seems like it was developed by some evil anti-reliability mastermind to undermine the possibility of connecting reliability to anything or anyone.

Mean Time Between Failure means what?

It’s the time between two failures? –
It’s when the first failure occurs? –
It’s how long the product is good for?
It seems way to big to be a reasonable goal! “How can an air pump have an MTBF of 4 million hours? That’s ridiculous these things are only supposed to last for five years!

This is the process of understanding everyone goes through as they are introduced to MTBF, formally or informally. [Read more…]

by Les Warrington Leave a Comment

How to Keep Sight of the Big Picture and Avoid being a Slave to Reliability

We have “reliability” in our job title? Therefore, we must promote reliability across all our company products as our first priority?

If you believe that, then I believe you are a slave to reliability.

A project manager or design engineer comes to us and makes a proposal that would adversely impact product reliability. We’d reject it, yes?

Well, I believe, on both counts, we should first take a step back and review the alternatives. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Overview of Presentations Skills

Presentation Skills for Reliability Engineers

We often present proposals and reports. We talk about the plan or results. We want funding, approval, or action. We need excellent presentation skills.

Excellent communication skills is often on job openings. It is not there by chance. Your ability to communicate well, especially via presentations is vital for your success and the success of your reliability program.

If your team, peers, or management do not understand your proposal or report when you present, few will take the time to read the material instead. Your presentation skills provide the incentive for action from your audience. Action you can guide using your presentation skills. [Read more…]

by Adam Bahret Leave a Comment

Correctly categorizing a root caused failure is everything

You have been put in charge of a program to study failure rates of brake pads. The place to start is a testing program that will generate data for analysis.

Testing programs should begin with a specific intent. This may be to characterize quality based failures, use life, or wear-out failure modes. When a test is complete it is easy to take all observed failures and use them in the data set to characterize the failure mode. This is a mistake.

Each of the study intents I described above can be attributed to wanting to understand a specific section of the life curve that is commonly represented by the “bathtub” curve. [Read more…]

by Adam Bahret Leave a Comment

Design of Experiments, Testing Compression and the Opportunity to Identify Interactions

Design of Experiments (DOE) is a phenomenal way to identify key relationships between variables and effects. It fully leverages statistics to not only identify these relationships in a compressed time frame but any “interactions” between variables that cause a specific effect. These interactions would not have been observed if experimentation was limited to adjusted one factor at a time (OFAT).

[Read more…]