Embracing Randomness

“You get pseudo-order when you seek order; you only get a measure of order and control when you embrace randomness.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Are you embracing randomness?  There’s a misconception that once you determine a failure mode is random that your reliability work is over.  That’s not the case, you’re just starting.

3 Ideas to Attack Your Random Failure Modes

• How Can You Reduce the Failure Rate? – It may be random when you drive over a nail on your commute to work but you can still solve the problem by changing your route or removing the nails from the road.  This applies similarly to your facility.  It may be random when your staff over-drive the equipment or put the wrong lubricant in the machinery, but you can solve these failures by educating your people.  Further investigation into the failures that make up your random distribution is required, and various types of solutions may be useful.
• Can You Detect the Failure? – As long as the time from the point at which the failure starts (P) to the point at which functional failure (F) happens is long enough (PF Interval), condition monitoring can still help you detect the failure and plan and schedule the repair/replacement.
• Can You Mitigate Risk? – Another good strategy is mitigating the consequence of failure.  Holding a spare, having a good job plan for installation/repair already prepared, etc. can be useful strategies for reducing the cost of failure and, ultimately, adding value to your organization.

When you run a Weibull calculation and you determine a failure mode is random, your work is just beginning.  How can you reduce the failure rate?  How can you detect the failure?  How can you reduce the impact of a failure?  These are questions to answer to ultimately embrace randomness.

Reliability Never Sleeps,

Rob