Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Find all articles across all article series listed in reverse chronological order.
Let’s say you run across a lightweight, inexpensive, easy to manufacture metal that you are considering for a new bike frame. Beyond the functional considerations of strength, size, and finish options what else do you consider?
Is it durable? If it fails how does it fail (a shattering a bicycle frame would not be good, for example). You may also consider how the bicycle will be used and stored. What stress will the frame experience over its lifetime? [Read more…]
Guest Post by John Ayers (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
Six Sigma is a powerful tool used to solve a problem or improve a process. The company (one of the 4 big defense companies) I worked for over 20 years lived, breathed and ate it every day. I became a six sigma specialist. For those readers not familiar with six sigma, I offer the following example to hopefully provide some insight into how it works and the benefits it offers. [Read more…]
People build, transport, use, maintain and dispose of equipment or products.
Thus the creation of these items should include consideration of the humans involved. In order to fully benefit from the functional capability of an item or system, we, as humans, have to interact with an item’s interface, displays, sounds, etc.
Whether a smartphone or bottling machine, the ability to provide commands or direction, the ability to recognize and understand responses, and the ability to correctly identify faults or outputs all combine to permit humans to place calls or fill juice bottles.
It is in the design stage that the elements of a piece of equipment (hardware or software) thwart or enable efficient human interaction. [Read more…]
Early in my career the engineering manager relished discovering equipment failure.
It didn’t matter if it was human, electronic, mechanical or software in nature, the glint in his eye soon gave way to a flood of possibilities. He enjoyed the process of investigating the fundamental reasons a failure occurred. [Read more…]
MTBF for electronics life entitlement measurements is a meaningless term. It says nothing about the distribution of failures or the cause of failures and is only valid for a constant failure rate, which almost never occurs in the real world. It is a term that should be eliminated along with reliability predictions of electronics systems with no moving parts. [Read more…]
In 1968 NASA explored where machines and humans would best achieve tasks primarily during space missions. Many of the findings are true today, and in some areas, the differences are blurring.
Machines created by humans continue to improve and take on complex tasks, that once only humans could do. For example, parking a car, now a feature of newer car models. Autonomous driving is happening and continuing to improve. The ability to reason, to foresee and evaluate risks, once thought to be strictly in the domain of human capability is now being done by machines. [Read more…]
A Question & Answer Period with Fred Schenkelberg on the what can be done to improve the reliability of your operation.
So far in this series, we have had the opportunity to discuss the role of reliability engineering in today’s maintenance environments. In this final post of the series, I (James) had the opportunity to ask Fred Schenkelberg some questions related to this very topic. Fred, with his years of experience, was able to provide some great insights to the role of reliability engineering, and what those in the maintenance department can do to improve reliability. [Read more…]
Lately, I’ve seen some evidence of reliability engineers giving up.
Throwing in the towel. Going with the flow. Not rocking the boat.
Is that our charter? To roll over and accept that we cannot make a difference?
No, it’s not. [Read more…]
Just back from a trip to Patagonia and catching up with emails and writing this morning. Posting an article for this list is due today along with a touch of travel weariness, decided to share a part of a question received concerning data analysis.
My thought is to post an actual question one of our peers is facing, and meet the deadline for this post. [Read more…]
Does your team procure, setup and put into operation equipment with a single focus on reducing the initial capital expenditure?
Do you work with your equipment suppliers to fully specify the equipment’s functions, performance, and reliability? Maybe not the reliability? [Read more…]
Or, how to master the body of knowledge and be an effective reliability engineer.
Yes, there is a lot to know concerning reliability engineering. You should have a firm grasp of statistics, modeling, laboratory and experimental procedures, failure analysis skills, and more. [Read more…]
“When the number of factors coming into play in a phenomenological complex is too large, scientific method in most cases fails. One need only think of the weather, in which case the prediction even for a few days ahead is impossible.” ― Albert Einstein
“Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” – Niels Bohr* We have always had a quest to reduce future uncertainties and know what is going to happen to us, how long we will live, and what may impact our lives. Horoscopes, Tarot
With the design FMEA complete, the equipment should have high inherent reliability. The equipment can then be installed in the plant, and provide a high level of performance to the business, at least initially. This is where Maintenance comes in. Maintenance can enable a low Life Cycle Cost, by preserving the reliability of the equipment. [Read more…]
If a human is going to build, install, monitor, use, operate, repair, or dismantle, then the design team must consider human factors.
According to Wikipedia
Ergonomics (or human factors) is the scientific discipline concerned with the understanding of interactions among humans and other elements of a system, and the profession that applies theory, principles, data and methods to design in order to optimize human well-being and overall system performance.
You may have been tapped one morning and given the assignment. You may have pursued the role either via a university program or by simply applying for the position.
Now what? How do you start in this role? What are you expected to do? [Read more…]