Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
New product development projects are really exciting at the start.
Even though we know very little about what the final product is going to look like, we can still use a quick graphical tool to help us direct our engineering attention.
We talk about ways to use a very simple System Architecture Diagram to help us get started and ways we can continue to iterate on it throughout development to help us communicate and make decisions.
Any product is a collection of materials that have been engineered, shaped, and modified to become components and joints (e.g., weld and braze joints). The materials can degrade due to exposure to use conditions – steel screws corrode when exposed to water, some plastics become brittle when exposed to sunlight, and coatings on surfaces can wear away.
Components and joints will stop functioning as required if their materials degrade too much. This is a problem if it reduces or loses product performance before the end of a product’s expected life.
Identifying the conditions to which materials are exposed and selecting materials that can withstand the exposure are critical parts of designing products that have good reliability.
During this event, I will discuss identifying the conditions that can cause materials to degrade. [Read more…]
Industry 4.0, the fourth industrial revolution. Beyond the buzzwords, what does this mean? My guest today is David Graham, Chief Technology Officer of 4IR.UK, a wholly owned subsidiary of Internet of Things focused, British Systems.
4IR.UK specializes in creating Monitoring, Control and Automation solutions, often based on the MultiPlug Edge Computing Platform, for manufacturing environments. They also provide consultancy and development for other Industry 4.0 platforms.
I was intrigued by a webinar presented by David entitled “A Decade of Industry 4.0 – What it wasn’t, what it was, and today, I’ll speak with David about his thoughts, experiences, and opinions of Industry 4.0.
David’s Contact Info:
David Graham
david.graham@4ir.uk
www.4ir.uk
Chris and Fred discuss what (if anything) we can learn from advertised warranty or reliability specifications from vendors.
ᐅ Play Episode
Philip and Fred discussing a handful of traits that may be unique to reliability engineers.
ᐅ Play Episode
Over the past couple of years, COVID has been a big catalyst for supply chain issues—product shortages, working remotely, all the COVID shutdowns. How has the shop floor changed over the last three years amidst all of this unprecedented change? In this week’s episode, we have Joey Cantrell, General Manager of Operations at Constellium, on the show to share his insights on this topic. Listen now!
During the product development process, are there so many design prototypes but the team’s still not getting buy-in?
Are design concepts changing mid-development after it’s “too late” to change the design?
Are designs picked-apart only after they’re nearly done?
Late in development, are there many fires to fight with too many surprises at test?
Quality during Design is not about compliance activities. It’s about being proactive with our team in early development. And knowing how to have conversations that gets us what we need so we can engineer designs.
We explore why Quality can help us PRUNE the development process just by the nature of how it’s used.
And we highlight the 3 areas that we focus on in Quality during Design: risk-based decisions, quality and reliability engineering partnership, and the user’s process.
Philip and Fred discussing a question about locating a listing of failure mechanisms.
ᐅ Play Episode
Greg and Fred discussing how The Rules Have Changed for Professional Societies as well as for most of us.
ᐅ Play Episode
The nature of work has changed drastically over the last three years, but how are those changes materializing in asset-intensive industries? The next generation of workers will be instrumental in shaping the future of work in maintenance, reliability, and operations as they embark on their careers, but what exactly will that look like? In this week’s episode, we have Luke Clark, Reliability Consultant at Allied Reliability, on the show to share his insights on this topic. Listen now!
Where do we sometimes need to look for inspiration? Books!
We talk about 11 books in 5 different topics that are useful for different perspectives on engineering and design topics.
And I tell you what I’m most looking forward to reading next.
What book recommendations do you have for me? Please add them to the comments, below.
Greg and Fred discussing how people make important decisions and why decision quality is important.
ᐅ Play Episode
Dianna and Fred discussing the effects of handling, cumulative test, and storage of test parts on test results.
ᐅ Play Episode
What is engineering in the color economy?
We explore facets of sustainable economic models: Green, Blue, Yellow, and Orange.
Where do you fit in now? Where would you like to be? And how can you make design choices within each (or all!) of these color economies?
Redundancy has continually proven not always to be redundant. Whether the Fukushima nuclear power plant or United Airlines Flight 232, additional components or subsystems that are supposed to take over when others have failed don’t always work. Why is that? There are quite a few reasons … many of which we already know about. But time and time again, otherwise, smart people choose to ignore what we know about how to REALLY make things redundant in order to save costs, save thinking, or otherwise confuse efforts with outcomes. In this webinar, we will look at how redundancy is described in textbooks … and how it can go wrong in the real world.
[Read more…]