Articles

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

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 James Kovacevic Leave a Comment

Fast Track RCM: Improving Plant Performance & Profitability

A Proven Framework to Improve Performance and Build Ownership of the Equipment

Understanding the how equipment failures along with utilizing a proven and effective approach to developing an equipment strategy is a winning combination for manufacturers everywhere. When combing the knowledge and the system, manufacturers can yield significant improvements in their operation, such as a reduction in PM workload of 22% with gain 4% in line efficiencies. Or how about a reduction of 42% of PMs, without a single loss in equipment availability. It is possible and required for manufacturers to become and remain profitable. [Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Shaft Alignment on Pumps

Shaft alignment on pumps. Shaft misalignment is one of the most common reasons for bearing and mechanical seal failures. Rotating misaligned shafts produce vibration and complex fluctuating radial and axial loads that lead to breakdowns. Shaft alignment is a precision maintenance requirement that requires exacting care and detail and if not performed will cause much production down time.

Keywords: axial alignment, laser alignment, dial indicator, soft foot, shaft coupling. [Read more…]

by Greg Hutchins 2 Comments

What are the Risks of Self Driving Vehicles?

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

You’ve no doubt read about Google’s driverless car and the effort at the state level to gain permission for its use on public roads.

Driverless Car Risks

There are the obvious concerns and risks with operating a driverless car, though Google does have someone sitting behind the wheel, just in case. Of course, can a person just along for the ride respond fast enough to a problem? This becomes one of the risk areas needing to be addressed before full adoption of driverless vehicles. Integrated with Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) we’ll see vehicles and roads sharing data with each other to produce safer travel and relief of congestion. [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 1 Comment

ALT Allocation of Test Units

One question that you should consider when planning multiple stress accelerated life test (ALT) is the allocation of test units to the various stresses.

We want to create a model detailing the relationship between stress and time to failure. We also want to project the time to failure estimates to use conditions. Ideally, we test at nominal conditions only and gather time to failure information. We do not have the luxury of time thus explore using ALT.

One method of allocation is to place an equal number of samples with each stress level. Is that the best approach? [Read more…]

by Anne Meixner 2 Comments

Introduction to Testing 1 2 3

Let’s Start At The Very Beginning

Before embarking on a complicated task one needs to have the basics understood.

In the musical “The Sound of Music,” Maria teaches the Von Trapp children to sing by first teaching them the musical scale.

She quickly discovers that the basics really do need to be learned one note at a time.

By the end of the “Do Re Mi” song she has them singing harmony while she sings a new melody with the words “When you know the notes to sing, you can sing most anything.” [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 Doug Plucknette 1 Comment

The 6 Things Every Maintenance & Reliability Program Needs To Achieve Sustained Results

I want my customers to be successful, every one of them. Yet there are times I can see the writing on the wall and I know as hard as I might try to show them a clear path to what it takes to be successful they have their own plan. Some of them are so complex that people become confused just trying to make sense of them, and others get so hung up in the minutiae of even the simplest of steps like listing a 3 part failure mode they will word-smith themselves to a point where folks just give up. I find myself asking “why do people have to make what is really so simple into something that appears to be complex?” [Read more…]

by James Kovacevic Leave a Comment

How Equipment Fails, Understanding the 6 Failure Patterns

Knowing How Equipment Fails Allows Effective Plans to Be Put In Place and Improve Equipment Reliability

Identifying How Equipment Fails

In the 1960s the failure rate of jet aircraft was high even with the extensive maintenance programs that were put in place to prevent the failures. The programs required overhauls, rebuilds and detailed inspections which required the various components to be disassembled. All of these activities were based on an estimated save life of the equipment. [Read more…]

by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

Uptime: Managing Failures Before They Occur

Being proactive with your assets is all about managing failures before they occur. You can reduce or eliminate the consequences of failure by forecasting what is likely to happen and deciding in advance about what to do about it. The advantage to doing this is that major business impact due to equipment breakdown can be avoided. High performing companies manage proactively – they foresee and avoid problems. It’s good for business! [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 Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Personal Risk and Big Data

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

I usually write about risk as related to projects, but several of the comments I received on my article on “Can Your Pacemaker be Hacked” made me realize that we are all faced with risk management in our personal lives.

Continuing on the medical topic, think about how many options you’re faced with when your doctor recommends a procedure, whether adding a pacemaker, replacing a joint or a prescription drug.

Hopefully you have a doctor that you trust and knows you, but how would you respond to the doctor recommending a procedure? If we use a risk process then we’d have to consider the possibility of the identified risk occurring, the impact on our life(style), the benefits of mitigating the risk.

To support our decision we could get a second opinion, do on-line research or check with family/friends that have had the same procedure. Then just like a manager assigning a risk we’d have to review the data we collected and make a decision. The advent of Electronic Medical Records should make life easier, but also lead to more challenges for managing/securing data. [Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini 1 Comment

Fibreglass Construction and Repair

Fibreglass construction and repair. Fibreglass is a glass fibre reinforced plastic composite with excellent chemical resistance properties. Its physical properties, selection of resins and glass, method of construction and fabrication and peculiar repair requirements must be appreciated when using this material.

Keywords: laminate, backing layer, structural layer, corrosion barrier, crack repair, winding angle. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 2 Comments

Electromigration Accelerated Life Testing

Black’s Equation

Black’s equation for estimating the time to failure due to electromigration is a classic. James Black explored and wrote about electromigration in aluminum metallization within semiconductors since 1969.

He and others have explored other materials used as conductors prone to electromigration. Thus, there are a number of models and constants available to match your particular system.

Let’s take a look at the general equation for a microcircuit conductor after a brief description of the failure mechanisms called electromigration. [Read more…]