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.
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You have carefully crafted a detailed reliability goal including function, environment, probability, and duration, plus apportioned it to critical supplied subsystems and components. Your vendor decides to use MTBF instead.
What can you do? What should you do?
We have data. Often, an abundance of data concerning equipment failures. Failures per month or MTBF-type measures do not reveal sufficient insights to understand the pattern of failures.
We often have more data than we can use. For time to failure, warranty claims, and related field data, we should take the time to learn what we can. Let’s explore organizing your field data and use basic techniques let the data speak.
Establishing a reliability goal for a project is often done early.
You may already know the reliability goal guides the entire development and supply chain team.
Yet, what is the actual value of setting a reliability goal?
Let’s discuss sources of variation and how to measure, monitor, and control processes to minimize the differences from one part to the next.
Statistical process control (SPC) is a set of tools that provide insights into the changing nature of processes.
Good with data or failure analysis are elements of a great reliability engineer.
Another is the ability to influence. The perfect analysis and dynamic slide deck are not sufficient. You also must master the ability to persuade to influence.
The investment in creating a reliable product pays dividends during the operation of the equipment or system.
The ability to estimate future savings or costs based on reliability engineering is key. Minimizing lifecycle cost occurs with reliability.
Obtaining certifications based on your reliability engineering knowledge does not make you a professional. It is how you apply your knowledge that does. Let’s explore what it means to be a professional reliability engineer.
It is how you apply your knowledge that does. Let’s explore what it means to be a professional reliability engineer.
We cheat time. As reliability engineers, we are asked to peer into the future and predict the time to failure for our products and systems.
So, how do you go about setting up an accelerated life test? Some options work and some that do not.
Education options have exploded.
For the past 75 years, we read books, returned to campus, attended workshops, traveled to conferences, and participated in evening meetings. Today, we have more options from more sources for our professional development.
You have signed up to sit for the CRE exam.
You have the education and experience. Then, you look at the CRE body of knowledge—the breadth of statistics, the range of tools, the plethora of concepts.
You need to review the material. Where do you start?
You may already know my position on MTBF.
If not, do not use MTBF at all, ever, in any form. So what should we use instead?
I suggest using reliability, the probability of success over a specific duration.
Let’s discuss what will work for you.
Early and often during product development, the team needs to know the expected reliability performance of the current design. The values provide information to make decisions.
We can create meaningful estimates. Or not.
Selecting as a supplier for components or subsystems involves many aspects, including the desired reliability performance.
Once selected, the ability of the supplier to provide items that meet or exceed the reliability requirements relies on their understanding of the requirements and operational conditions related to the specific item within the system.
It also relies on the supplier’s knowledge of their own design and manufacturing processes as it relates to reliability performance.
A common request of reliability professionals is to design a set of reliability tests.
Many rely on standards, such as 85°C / 85%RH, to determine if a system is reliable, yet the standards do not provide a means to translate the results to your specific situation.