Articles

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

Capacitance Levels Probes

Capacitance level probes consist of a long rod or cable that protrude into a vessel and its contents. The instrument sets up an electric field between the probe and the tank wall using the contents of the tank as a dielectric (a nonconductor that allows an electric field to exist within itself). If the tank is non-metal, such as plastic or brick lined, two parallel rods are mounted in the level probe or a metal strip can be run on the outside of the tank. The electric field is set-up between the two probes or the probe and the metal strip. Figure 1 shows a simplified layout for a capacitance level probe. [Read more…]

by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

ISO 31000 as an Enterprise Risk Management Standard

ISO 31000 is 23 pages long, but these pages provide an entry level Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) guideline.

Why is this important?

An organization develops ISO 31000 ERM capabilities to provide a structured, consistent, disciplined, and achievable approach to risk management that facilitates Risk Based Thinking throughout the organization. Risk Based Thinking is composed of 1. Risk based, problem solving (RB – PS) and 2. Risk based, decision making (RB –DM). Both RB – PS and RB – DM are the basis for all management and supervision. We discuss this in our new book: ISO 31000: Enterprise Risk Management.

Interestingly, we wrote a 230 page book packed with loads of information for a 23 page standard. And oh by the way, we could have written another 200 pages. [Read more…]

by Adam Bahret 6 Comments

Mission Profile

Mission profiles are fundamental to any reliability prediction being valid. Without clearly defined environmental and use profiles there will be a long chain of inaccuracy that accumulates into significant errors within a product.

This is what occurs at the following stages, or tools, if the mission profile or environment profile changes after its completion. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 2 Comments

The Quality Triangle and Reliability

How Does Reliability Fit with the Quality Triangle?

The Quality Triangle provides a method to establish priorities for a project. It strives to balance time, cost, and quality (or scope instead of quality). It does not include reliability.

Now I am a bit bias as a reliability engineer and believe a projects set of priorities should explicitly include reliability performance. Of course, there are many potential priorities, yet reliability certainly can make or break a product, it’s market acceptance, and an organization’s profitability.

So, given a quality triangle based set of priorities, how does reliability fit in? [Read more…]

by Ash Norton 2 Comments

6 Tips for Becoming an Engineering Subject Matter Expert

As you’ve read in my previous post, I learned so much over the seven year journey of becoming an Engineering Subject Matter Expert. While there is no clear cut path, and every career is different, some of the tips below will help you minimize the detours along the way! [Read more…]

by Perry Parendo 2 Comments

What is Robust Design?

The concept of robust design is commonly discussed, but what exactly is it? What options are available for achieving robust design? How do you know if it could be appropriate for your new product or process application?

This overview helps answer those questions – contact Perrys Solutions for more specific assistance. [Read more…]

by Doug Plucknette 1 Comment

Is Your Company’s Reputation Important?

5 Tips on How To Maintain Reputation & Integrity

My father taught me at a young age that your name is everything and if you want to be successful in life you have to ensure that when someone hears your name in conversation or reads your name in print that the first thing they think is positive.

The world hasn’t changed from the time he told me that over 40 years ago, in fact today it’s even more critical because we now have the internet and social media.

Good news travels fast.

Bad news travels 100 times faster!

Understanding this, here are 5 tips on what your company can do to build and maintain its reputation and integrity. [Read more…]

by Carl S. Carlson 1 Comment

FMEA Success Factors – Part 1

Six Essential Factors for FMEA Success

Have you ever wondered what are the key ingredients for successful FMEA application in a company? Why are some FMEAs successsful, and others are not? What are the most important factors for uniformly achieving great results? Based on supervising or performing over two thousand FMEAs, six FMEA success factors have been identified, and they are covered in this article.

Nothing succeeds like success.
Alexandre Dumas
[Read more…]

by James Kovacevic 1 Comment

STOP! Break the Reactive Cycle with Roles & Responsibilities

The key to driving performance to new heights is Roles & Responsibilities.

Play drawing — Image from opensource.com

Your planner is putting together a scheduler to 8:00pm on a Friday night for Saturday morning. Your storeroom doesn’t have the parts you need and you maintenance supervisor is running back and forth. On top of this, you are unable to meet your maintenance goals, preventing the orgainzation from achieving its goals.

Depending on your organization, you may walk into this type of chaos every morning, and those that don’t, chances are you did at some point.

So what seperates the organizations that have this choas and those that don’t? Clear Roles & Responsibilities is what seperates these two types of orgainzations. This is the first of a series of 6 posts on the topic of Roles & Responsibilities. [Read more…]

by Adam Bahret Leave a Comment

The Reliability Engineering Role

What does the reliability engineer do?

Do they design reliable products? Or Do they guide the development of reliable products?

It’s some mix of course. It depends on the process for the organization they operate in. I will point out that neither extreme works. I am often surprised with how many organizations I see that still have the 1950’s model of ” Design it and then give it to the reliability team to make it reliable.” I still don’t believe there is a single person in any engineering role in any engineering organization that believes that works.

That is what one of my old mentors used to call a “window dressing program”. No one believes it actually helps the product but you get to take your customers around your facility and show them all the great testing you are doing (SILENT END OF SENTENCE ” on out of rev parts and in a program phase where results can’t be implemented.”). [Read more…]

by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Risk Assessment Benefits

Risk assessment is a critical element of ISO 31000 risk management framework. Risk assessment provides the requisite evidence based data and information for Risk Based Thinking, specifically risk based problem solving and risk based decision making. Using the appropriate risk assessment for the organization can determine how to treat and manage specific risks. [Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Use Words Instead of Code Numbers

in your CMMS System

A work order full of code numbers confuses people. When work order type (breakdown, corrective, modification, etc) is described as Work Order Type ‘04’ you can guarantee that no one knows what ‘04’ is without looking it up on a list.

If a Trade Type is a ‘02’ and it means a fitter, you can be sure that a lot of work order requests from operators will be wrong and they will take the planner’s time to correct. Even more confusing is when the Work Order Type and the Trade Type are both an ‘04’! [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 1 Comment

A Framework for Risk Management

Making or supporting decisions involving product or system reliability is fraught with uncertainty. Is it reliable enough? Will failures occur prematurely? Are failures dangerous?

Uncertainty is risk.

In recent years more organizations and international standard bodies have focused on risk management. Identifying, analyzing, and mitigating uncertainty in a systematic manner.

There is not a set way for every organization to organize a risk management process. The ISO 31000 standard does describe a framework for the implementation of risk management within your organization. [Read more…]

by Anne Meixner Leave a Comment

Applying S@ Faults with a Simulator: An Introduction

When I introduced you to the Stuck at Fault Model I stated that the size of VLSI devices necessitated the usage of Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools to support testing.

My first full-time job at IBM exposed me to the world of test and to their EDA tools.

In the mid-1980’s, testing of logic devices relied upon the S@ fault model. Three common software tools included fault simulation, automatic test pattern generation, and fault diagnosis.

This article will provide an introduction to fault simulation as one can view the other two tools as applications built upon a fault simulator. [Read more…]

by Dennis Craggs Leave a Comment

Is Warranty Big Data?

Vehicle Warranty Big Data

Automobile companies pay dealers to perform vehicle prep and make warranty repairs on customer vehicles. A lot of data is collected thus warranty is considered big data.

Generally, vehicle warranty covers 3 years or 36,000 miles. When a vehicle is serviced, the customer, vehicle, repair, and text data are collected. Claims are entered into a transaction database, may be rejected for a number of reasons, and then resubmitted until resolved. The transaction database covers many model years, millions of vehicles, and a number of warranty claims for each vehicle. As a rough estimate, assuming 10 years, 2 million vehicles/year, and 2 claims for each vehicle, yields 40 million records. The actual number is higher due to the submission, rejections, and resubmission cycle.

[Read more…]