Articles

Find all articles across all article series listed in reverse chronological order.

Systems/Validation Engineering (Part 1)

In this article we’ll look at the technical leg of project management that enables the development of a hardware product.

Let’s start with a simplified definition of project management:

The planning, monitoring and execution of the project within scope, schedule and resource constraints. The project manager works with subject matter experts to establish a work breakdown structure and facilitates the execution of WBS activities and deliverables. Ultimately, the goal is good project quality within the scope, schedule and resource constraints. However, good product quality and reliability depends on systems/validation engineering.

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by Miguel Pengel Leave a Comment

Spares Management Guide & Case Study (Practical)

The management of spare parts and inventories is all about balance between the cost of stocking the parts and the costs and risks of not having them when they are required.

As a consultancy owner, one of the most overlooked issues I see in Industrial operations is the management of spare parts. I don’t have enough fingers, toes and limbs to count how many times I’ve heard the phrase ” The machine is down because we’re waiting on spare parts”.

I see this phrase normalised so often that people don’t bat an eye and have accepted it as the norm- a lot of maintenance professionals don’t focus on the effective management of this area . I think this is overlooked because it requires MATH to calculate- and just like poetry, most people hate math. [Read more…]

by JD Solomon 4 Comments

How Technical Facilitators Can Avoid Provoking Others When Asking Questions

Technical facilitators should avoid provoking others when asking questions to maintain respect, productive effective communication, and create professional relationships. However, there are situations where provocative questions can be effective. For technically trained professionals, the balance lies in knowing when to use respectful inquiry to foster collaboration and when to employ pointed questions to drive necessary change and innovation. The bottom line is to ask powerful questions. This article discusses how to avoid provoking others when asking questions.

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by Semion Gengrinovich Leave a Comment

Preventive Maintenance

Preventive maintenance is a proactive approach used by industries to ensure the longevity and optimal performance of their assets. It involves regular maintenance tasks such as cleaning, lubrication, parts replacement, and equipment repairs to prevent unplanned downtime.

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by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Risk Management Lessons from the Ukraine War

Guest Post by Patrick Ow (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Risk professionals can learn from Russia’s unprovoked war on Ukraine.

The ripple effect of the war on every individual can be felt across the globe. One such effect is the increase in fuel and food prices. This war is a stark reminder that we are living in an interconnected world. And the inter-connectedness of our risks within and external to our organisation must be considered as we identify and manage our risks. The complexity of our risk management practices should not be under-estimated.

Here are some risk management lessons we can learn. [Read more…]

by Larry George 3 Comments

Statistical Software Problem?

When a system fails for the first failure in one mode at time t, this data is right censored data for other failure modes! How to estimate reliability functions for all failure modes from first failure data?

Google AI says, “’Competing risks’ refers to a statistical scenario where a subject can experience failure from multiple possible causes, but once one failure occurs, it prevents the observation of any other potential failures, essentially creating “multiple failure modes” that compete with each other to be the first event observed; this means analyzing the probability of a specific failure type needs to account for the possibility of other competing failures happening first.” “Use appropriate statistical methods: Employ statistical models specifically designed for competing risks analysis…”

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by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

The Science of Teams and Teamwork

There is something very powerful about working in teams. That power becomes evident when you look at teams as human structures built to deliver reliable outcomes. Managers who want higher reliability, top quality production and fewer problems need to understand why teams are so powerful and how to gain that power for themselves.

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by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

Proactive vs Reactive: which is better for your business?

Businesses often attempt to maximize profits for owners or shareholders by taking measures to reduce costs. A reactive approach to plant and equipment breakdowns is very costly, and it reduces outputs. By failing to do what it takes to become proactive, they take risks against the odds of frequent failure, high repair and downtime costs. A proactive approach is more productive, predictable and less expensive, as it relies on strategic maintenance.to increase equipment life and running times, reduce failure risk, and lower operating costs.

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by Nancy Regan Leave a Comment

RCM Analysis Success Starts w/Proper Scope Definition: 4 Key Factors

Hi everyone, I’m Nancy Regan, and in today’s video, we’re diving into the crucial role that scope definition plays in the success of Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) analysis. Proper planning is essential, and in this video, I’ll walk you through four key factors that demonstrate how the scope of your RCM analysis drives the entire planning process.

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by Hemant Urdhwareshe Leave a Comment

Hypothesis Testing Part-3: Two Sample t-test with tables and using Excel

Dear friends, we are happy to release our third video in our series on Hypothesis Testing! In this video, Hemant Urdhwareshe explains the application of Student’s t-test for comparison of two independent samples using tables of t-distribution and also using Microsoft Excel Add-ins. The concept is illustrated with an application example of comparing tire life of two makes.

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by Ray Harkins Leave a Comment

Understanding the Six Types of Measurement System Error

Our work as quality and reliability engineers, or as countless other technical positions across every industry, relies heavily on the instrumentation we use. Torque meters, tensile testers, micrometers, spectrometers and coordinate measuring machines provide critical data about the variation within the processes we design and maintain.

But these tools execute measurement processes which, like all processes, introduce variation into the results they generate. This fact – that every gage contributes variation to the values it reports – is the basis for Measurement Systems Analysis (MSA), a collection of statistical tools and approaches designed to isolate and quantify sources of measurement error.

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by Ramesh Gulati Leave a Comment

Are You A Hero or A Reliability Leader?

With Ramesh Gulati

The management and organization can create heroes and reliability leaders by their behavior. When an asset breaks down, some people in the workforce fix it quickly. We may celebrate their work as heroic, but another group of people fix things rapidly while finding and eliminating root causes. These proactive individuals are the real heroes, also known as Reliability Leaders. This webinar discusses the attributes of reliability leaders: the real heroes.

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by JD Solomon Leave a Comment

Facilitation & Collaboration: 10 Proven Tips For Asking Great Questions

“I can’t believe you asked him if he married a trophy wife,” my colleague stated. “Even more, I can’t believe he answered it without getting mad. Or that he told you so much about his first marriage and himself.”

“Well, the key was that I kept the questions short and followed where he took the conversation,” I replied. “On its own, the trophy wife is a bit over the top. But in the larger context, it flowed with everything he described and his comfort in discussing it with me.”

10 Tips for Better Questions in Business Environments

Effective communication is important in all relationships. The opening story was among business colleagues after a professional association meeting. While it is a bit personal, it reminds us that asking good questions – including in business environments – is personal.

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by Fred Schenkelberg 5 Comments

We Need to Try Harder to Avoid MTBF

Just back from the Reliability and Maintainability Symposium and not happy. While there are signs, a proudly worn button, regular mentions of progress and support, we still talk about reliability using MTBF too often. We need to avoid MTBF actively, no, I mean aggressively.

Let’s get the message out there concerning the folly of using MTBF as a surrogate to discuss reliability. We need to work relentlessly to avoid MTBF in all occasions.

Teaching reliability statistics does not require the teaching of MTBF.

Describing product reliability performance does not benefit by using MTBF.

Creating reliability predictions that create MTBF values doesn’t make sense in most if not all cases. [Read more…]

by Semion Gengrinovich 1 Comment

HALT or ALT ? Is it Only One Letter Differences?

HALT (Highly Accelerated Life Testing) is the foundation for the definition of HASS (Highly Accelerated Stress Screening) and HASA (Highly Accelerated Stress Audit).

HALT is primarily used to expose weaknesses in the design of a product by subjecting it to extreme environmental conditions such as temperature, vibration, and humidity, in order to identify and eliminate design flaws and weak points before the product is released to the market.

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