Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Let's have an in-depth discussion during the live webinar series events: Reliability Engineering Basics, Statistics, Accelerated Testing, Program Assessment, and Improvement. Catch up or review past events below.
To attend an upcoming live event, visit the Live Events section of the site, which lists the available upcoming webinars. Recordings are available via recorded videos or audio only via the podcast show.
Find one that looks interesting and register for the event. You will receive login directions and reminders prior to the event. Plus you will be able to join the discussion during the event.
A common question about reliability testing is, “What is the sample size?” It is also a difficult question to answer well. The right sample size balances cost, accuracy, and variability. In some cases, we also consider the time to results.
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The Weibull distribution is a versatile tool to analyze time-to-failure data. Like any tool, it could be wielded well or not so well. In this short webinar, let’s discuss when and why you would use Weibull analysis, the basic process, and its limitations.
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Some products and systems are just dangerous, inherently. Understanding inherent safety-related risks permits a team to design out or mitigate those risks. Hazard analysis is the systematic process of identifying and controlling safety risks.
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I define a reliability failure as something that costs your organization money. It might be a warranty expense or a lost customer. A failure may also create customer expenses, too. Let’s talk about the range of un-reliability costs and their impacts.
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The ability to determine the root cause of a failure is a skill. It requires agility, leadership, inquisitiveness, diligence, and technical skill. Successful RCA taps into your creativity and technical prowess. Using a structured approach helps.
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Monitoring reliability performance requires both measurement and reporting skills. Focusing on making decisions, we can tailor our metrics to improve our reliability program today. The right measures allow your team to spot problems and solve them.
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The new CRE body of knowledge goes into effect in January 2018. With the additions, deletions, and changes to topics, it attempts to reflect what reliability engineering does daily. Let’s closely examine the new 2018 BOK and what it means. [Read more…]
A tool is only as useful as knowing when and how to use it. In this webinar, we will discuss identifying an appropriate DOE project and setting up (define) a DOE. A process for DOE execution will be provided and discussed. We will also provide the thought processes to know when a DOE application is present. [Read more…]
Risk is borne from uncertainty. The reliability performance of your product line and individual products is uncertain. Identifying and understanding the risks involved helps your team mitigate reliability performance risks.
An obvious risk and common question when developing a new product involves the field failure rate. If the failure rate is too high, it may dissuade customers from buying the product. If too low, we assign funds unnecessarily to cover unrealized warranty expenses. [Read more…]
One of the more significant challenges for reliability engineering in product development is the complete execution of the planned reliability process in product development. The reliability tools and techniques outlined in the product plan are often skipped or delayed, minimizing the opportunity for outputs to fully impact the program and product. [Read more…]
A reasonable model helps you make informed decisions. A simple reliability block diagram often provides the insights your team needs to prioritize and achieve the desired reliability performance. Let’s create, populate, and use RBDs effectively.
RBDs comprise a few simple elements and arrangements yet can describe a wide range of products and systems. There are a few assumptions to remember and a few basic ways to create a useful model for your system. [Read more…]
Accelerated Life Testing, ALT, is a technique to estimate an item’s time to failure-pattern. In short, ALT allows us to shorten time. Done well, it provides valuable insights into the future. Done poorly, it is a colossal waste of resources.
In this webinar, let’s talk about the various methods available to you for ALT. Select the right approach, given your understanding of the failure mechanism involved. And discuss the best and a few worst practices when planning and conducting ALT. [Read more…]
HALT promises to find the weaknesses in your design early in the design process. Understanding the basic concepts underlying HALT enables you to do so effectively. Let’s discuss this essential discovery tool and how it fits into your program.
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Writing and executing effective reliability plans is a skill that is not often taught in reliability courses or seminars. It falls under the body of knowledge of reliability management, which is a different set of skills than reliability engineering. What is a Reliability Plan, and how should it be developed? What do well-written reliability tasks look like? How detailed should tasks be described, and how can they be written to support easy execution? How do you ensure that your Reliability Plan is successfully implemented to the desired results?
There are dozens of quality and reliability tools. How does a reliability practitioner know which specific tools to use in a new reliability program. Should reliability allocation be used? Which types of FMEAs are needed? What about robust design or design margin analysis? How does one go about selecting the right reliability tools that will be incorporated into an effective reliability plan?