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What do these products have in common?

What do these products have in common?

Bulletproof!

It is a very conscious decision to have reliability be a part of your products brand.

What conversations with marketing and the leadership have occurred for your next product development program?

Was there a conscious decision to place your product in a certain range of reliability?

Too many times it’s a discussion that happens as the product is reaching it’s Beta stage of development, “Let’s measure its reliability and see where it’s at and if we need to improve it”.

You can measure reliability that late in the game but you have little opportunity to change it.  So what if it is far lower than the product target market expects?

What if it is far overbuilt and millions of dollars of cost savings were missed in this first generation of the design?

It happens this way more than not. [Read more…]

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Overview of Reliability Engineering

An Overview of Reliability Engineering Tasks and Application from a Product Design and Plant Operation Perspective

A Guest Post by Lennox Bennett

Abstract / Summary

In deciding what industry you want to work as a reliability engineer, it is always good to have an understanding of what functional responsibilities you are expected to execute as a part of the job function.

You should always carefully review the job description then compare your knowledge acquired through training and on-the-job experience and ask yourself if you are capable of performing functions required without additional training.

Furthermore, we need to consider our technical limitations and at the same time be aware that the job description provided may not exclusive represents all the tasks you are expected to perform. [Read more…]

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Taking a break — back in September

It’s been almost a year since launching Accendo Reliability. It’s been fun, exciting, and weekly.

Love it and really enjoy helping you answer questions, get stuff done, and master reliability engineering.

Since my wife and I just bought a house (out playing Pokemon Go when we stopped for an open house – and a week later our offer was accepted). Now we’re preparing to move ourselves to our new home.

There is a lot involved. [Read more…]

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When to Take Action on Field Failure Data?

When to Take Action on Field Failure Data?

Not much. You need just enough field failure data to identify the root cause and determine if and how to resolve the problem.

Field data will accumulate even if your program works diligently to prevent failures.

The actions taken before the reported failure will frame when you need to take action.

Gathering failure data and evaluating the trigger points for action is a reactive approach. This approach means you will only respond to problems.

You will also likely not spot the important emerging issues before they become significant problems. [Read more…]

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A Different Way to Consider Derating Guidelines

A Different Way to Consider Derating Guidelines

The component choice an electrical engineer starts with the functional requirements of the circuit. Another consideration is the rated values of the specific component selected.

Derating guidelines provide information to compare the component rated values to select stresses or conditions. The intent is to assist the engineering team to select robust enough components for the application.

Robust here implying the component within the circuit will operate for a suitable length of time. [Read more…]

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3 Ways to Provide Field Reliability Feedback to the Design Team

3 Ways to Provide Field Reliability Feedback to the Design Team

By the time a product fails in the field, the design team is focused on the next design.

They are looking to the future and not looking for field reliability feedback. We know that each failure contains valuable information.

We, as reliability professionals, often work to create as much useful information concerning failure modes and mechanisms as possible. We want to improve the design.

Yet, what happens when the design team has moved on to the next project? When the expertise to effectively make changes to the design to improve product reliability performance is no longer paid to work on the previous design?

What can you do to engage the right people to implement the necessary changes?

Here are a few ideas that I’ve seen used to effectively make good use of field failures to create meaningful field reliability feedback. [Read more…]

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Be Aware of Why You Don’t Have Problems

Be Aware of Why You Don’t Have Problems

I see many organizations that feel a great sense of victory when they solve a current issue that has been plaguing their product.  

It may be a field issue that took a product that was performing flawlessly to a steeply increasing failure rate “out of nowhere”.  

Customers are angry, management is angry, everyone is angry and afraid.  It seems to go on forever and the end is unknown.  Then just as suddenly as the issue arose, a solution is found that puts the universe back in order.  

The team celebrates, goes back to the day to day tasks that keep the machine running and there is a sense of calm.  But the unspoken nervousness of waiting for the next issue to pop up is there.  

There is nothing to do but just wait.  A new one will arise, maybe tomorrow, maybe in six months, maybe next year.  

Mid-maturity vs High-maturity culture

“But that is the way it is and there isn’t much that can be done about it”. 

That is the mindset of a Mid-maturity reliability culture.  A High-maturity reliability culture doesn’t have to just sit and wait for the next “gremlin strike”.  

The reason is that not only do they know what caused the last issue,  they also know why they currently aren’t having any issues.  It is a subtle but big difference.  

The High-maturity reliability culture has in place an ongoing program that studies the variabilities that can occur in their product manufacturing and usage.  This program uses methods such as specialized testing and analysis that supports mitigations in design, manufacturing, and product usage.  

Now the organization isn’t just not having issues, they know why they aren’t having issues!

But in reality, it’s just pitfalls we fall into because we simply aren’t willing to study the road up ahead.

Related:

5 Steps to Building a Reliability Culture (article)

Purpose of a Reliability Program (article)

How to Assess Your Reliability Program (article)

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Petri Nets for System Reliability Modeling

Petri Nets for System Reliability Modeling

A Petri net graph is a depiction of a system using a symbolic language.

The modeling permits the analysis of complex systems or networks of systems.

It is possible to include elements of the system that are neither function or failed. In other words, it permits modeling a system when one or more of the elements are in a degraded state or under repair.

Petri net modeling is useful when the repair/restore times are long compared to operating times, as reliability block diagrams and fault tree analysis approach assume short or insignificant repair times, in most cases. [Read more…]

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Improve Decision Making with Statistics

Improve Decision Making with Statistics

We make decisions all the time. Often our decision making is with little more than a gut feeling.

When faced with a major decision we often look data to help us decide. Is the product reliable enough as designed? Which field returns indicate we should stop production?

Some decision may help us earn or lose thousands if not millions of dollars.

Deciding to delay a product launch by six months means we have no revenue for the duration. The delay may also permit us to address a design flaw that would cause half the products to fail within a few months.

The later may cause loss of market share, erosion of brand loyalty, not to mention the cost of warranty claims. [Read more…]

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Understanding Reliability Across an Industry

Understanding Reliability Across an Industry

The Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Energy conducted an Energy Storage Reliability Workshop this week provide a unique glimpse at how the stakeholders across an industry view reliability.

The representatives from government and private sector, including national labs, large and small companies, insurers and consultants gather to talk about the reliability of large-scale stationary energy storage systems.

Specifically, the focus of the workshop was on helping the DOE identify the specific activities and focus for their involvement in this relatively new industry segment.
[Read more…]

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How Do You Select Reliability Tasks to Accomplish?

How Do You Select Reliability Tasks to Accomplish?

As reliability engineers, we have a large number of tools available.

From project planning, system modeling, data analysis, test planning, to risk identification and defect discovery, we have techniques, procedures, algorithms to help us identify and solve reliability problems.

We also may ways to apply an individual reliability task.

We could do an exploratory drop test to see what happens if anything. Or, we could conduct a full characterization study of the force signature of drops onto different surfaces and faces from a range of heights. Or something in-between.

We have options and thus need to make choices. [Read more…]

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Field Data Analysis First Look

Field Data Analysis First Look

Field data analysis starts with the collection of data.

In a previous article, we used a Nevada chart to gather the counts per month of field failure data. The chart also provides the necessary data to account for how many units have not failed as of yet.

The Nevada chart on its own is just a table of numbers and does not reveal patterns of the changing nature of failure rates over time. Are we experiencing early life failures or wear-out related failures?

We need to conduct some data analysis to learn what message the data contains. [Read more…]