Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Find all articles across all article series listed in reverse chronological order.
Understanding the reliability stakeholders in an organization is an interesting exercise.
Who are they?
It’s easy to look at each of those and say “They all could easily get by and appear successful even if a product has moderate to poor reliability”. You could also state that ” Reliability is a key factor to success in their role” [Read more…]
RCM Implementations don’t fail, believe me if you understand what your getting into upfront, use a proven process to select your asset for analysis AND you commit the resources, your implementation will be a huge success.
Looking back 20 years I can clearly remember performing my first RCM analysis and the ordeal that followed as we struggled to:
a) See the value in the analysis we had just completed (Someone told us that RCM should be performed on every piece of equipment at our plant so we selected one of our most common assets.
b) Free up the resources necessary to implement the tasks that came out of the analysis. [Read more…]
There is much talk about data based decision making, but I think that misses the point. We make decisions based on knowledge. Data needs to be translated into that knowledge, and yet not all knowledge can be measured. This has been my training philosophy for a number of years now and has been quite effective. [Read more…]
What did American inventor and businessman Charles Kettering mean when he said, “A problem well stated is a problem half-solved”? Framing the problem and pondering solutions can be enlightening, and a great way to learn. This article will pose three problems and offer solutions, as a way to learn by doing.
“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
Confucius
Nothing can undermine FMEA results more than approaching the subject from the wrong philosophy. In this article readers will learn how use key focus areas to achieve effective FMEAs in all applications.
“In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.”
Thomas Jefferson
Should an FMEA result in design or manufacturing improvements? Should it ensure that tests discover the right problems? What are the objectives of FMEAs? Whether you are new to FMEA or an experienced practitioner, there is always something to learn. This is the first in a series of articles on FMEA that should expand the knowledge of every reader.
“Successful engineering is all about understanding how things break or fail.” ~ Henry Petroski
Do you consider yourself new to FMEA, or are you an FMEA expert?
Or somewhere in between?
I’m a great believer that knowledge of any tool such as FMEA, is a lifelong journey. In the new series of articles called Inside FMEA, my intention is to bring to life the subject of FMEA, and provide value to readers from all levels of experience.
Each week I will publish a new article on Accendo. The topics will span the full range of FMEA applications, and offer guidance to real-world challenges that FMEA teams face each and every day. [Read more…]
Often times the maintenance team is focused on preventing failures in the facility. All failures need to be addressed and no failures are acceptable. This mindset may be holding back the uptime in your facility. How is this? After all, if we strive to prevent all failures shouldn’t uptime improve?
Most organizations do not have the resources to prevent every single failure and as such, resources are often pulled from failure to failure. When the organization focuses on the consequences of the failure, instead of the failure itself, it can free up the resources to improve reliability. Once the consequences are understood, running equipment to failure becomes an option. This allows the team to focus on preventing the failures that make a difference to the business. [Read more…]
ISO 31000 is going to be used more often as more ISO certified companies adopt Risk Based Thinking. However, ISO 31000 can be challenging. Why?
Interestingly, the descriptive nature of the ISO 31000 standard may well be its strength, but may also be its weakness. The standard without the proper guidance of a risk practitioner maybe come discretionary and even arbitrary.
ISO 9001:2015 has Risk Based Thinking requirements. Note ISO 31000 was developed in 2009 and is not harmonized with the new annex SL standards and ISO 9001:2015. [Read more…]
What readers will learn from this article.
The 2018 ASQ CRE Body of Knowledge has a new top-level section titled II. Risk Management.
A few of the topics, 6 of the 9, are the same or similar to topics in the previous CRE BoK. There are three new topics that extend the reliability engineers need to know, understand, and use risk management tools.
Overall the new section of Risk Management has three groups of topics:
A. Identification
B. Analysis
C. Mitigation
Let’s take a quick look at the details in this new section and highlight the changes and new elements. [Read more…]
In the previous article you learned to apply the Stuck at Fault Model (S@) to a small combinational circuit.
You can take the learning on the Full 1-bit adder and apply it to larger combinational circuit.
In testing lingo, you often hear people refer to this as the testing of random logic. Technically, there’s nothing random about the logic.
I think “random” gets used to contrast with the highly structured design of memory circuits into array of 1-bit cells. Memory test lends itself to algorithmic testing, for example the Marching 1. In random logic testing you may use algorithms to propagate your faults, that is automatically develop a test pattern.
You need to keep in mind that the logic being tested has a functional purpose and this can be implemented in a multitude of ways. Let’s take a second look at the adder function. [Read more…]
This is the bathtub curve we are often shown.
This is what a real bathtub curve looks like. [Read more…]
Just a bit of humor as we push to the end of another work week!
I turned 55 a few weeks back and just yesterday someone asked me how old I was. I had to stop for a minute to think and when I replied 55 the young Engineer who asked me the question sat back in his chair and said; “Wow! That means you have been working in the Reliability Engineering field like 35 years! I can’t imagine the changes you have seen in your career!” [Read more…]
PdM & CBM are in almost every discussion that involves improving plant performance and reducing costs. But what is the difference between the two and when should one be used over the other? This post will address those two questions and a few cautions when using these techniques. [Read more…]