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.
Understanding context is essential for making smart, risk-based decisions and solving tough problems.
Understanding context is important to ensure you are correctly solving the right problem. Understanding context helps you understand the root cause of the problem and the key stakeholders. It helps you develop effective solutions. It helps you define your assumptions and biases. [Read more…]
Ever heard of Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA)? It is a wonderful activity that can do amazing things for … what? It depends on what you might have heard or what you are used to. Why? Because there are several different FMEAs that do different things for … different things. A Design FMEA can help us prevent really basic, simple flaws in a new product. A Process FMEA can help us prevent really basic, simple flaws in a new process. What process? Any process … but typically manufacturing. Many people who have heard of FMEAs usually associate them with either design or processes. Then, there are System and Software FMEAs. Want to get an overview of which FMEAs do what and when you would use one instead of the other? Join us for this webinar.
In the past two months, I’ve received a few questions concerning why I recommend avoiding using MTBF or similar metrics. I’m also moving the articles I and others wrote on the topic from NoMTBF.com to Accendo Reliability. So, the topic of MTBF has been on my mind.
This morning’s email included a question on why I was so against using MTBF. This event is my answer. [Read more…]
Risk is now incorporated into many, if not all, ISO quality and reliability standards. ISO 31000 is the go-to international standard for risk management and risk-based decision-making. ISO 31000 can be used by all types of organizations, regardless of their size, industry, or sector. ISO 31000 provides a standardized and systematic approach to risk management. This helps organizations to identify, assess, and manage risks consistently and effectively. [Read more…]
First thing … the MTBF is not a reliability metric (other webinars explain why!) But there are many times when (for reasons good and bad) we need to test something to see how often it fails. This can help us determine how many spare parts we need, how many maintainers and technicians we need to employ, and many other really useful (typically logistic) considerations. We sometimes also need to be able to work out if a product meets an MTBF requirement. But when we do … we need to take into all sorts of statistical considerations like producer’s risk, consumer’s risk, and discrimination ratio. Shouldn’t the requirement be the requirement? If you want to learn more about MTBF testing and how it might (or might not) work … then join us for this webinar.
When first charged with designing, conducting, and analyzing an ALT, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as accelerated life testing. Along with the assigned task was the expectation that I would learn what was necessary to design, conduct, and analyze a suitable ALT. I like those kinds of tasks – one where I must learn to succeed. [Read more…]
Covid taught us the importance of managing suppliers, especially those from China and Asia. Risk became the top supply management concern over supplier delivery, quality, and cost. For example, just-in-time deliveries became just-in-case—many common sense ideas of lean changed. Incoming, in-process, and final inventories rose. Overall costs increased. Risk became the overarching concern for managing suppliers. [Read more…]
Everyone ‘knows’ why we do reliability engineering … right? Customer experience. Organization reputation. Reduced warranty claims ten years from now. But these are boring reasons that really don’t motivate me to take reliability seriously now. Why should I invest so much time into an activity that benefits the ‘company’ or the ‘customer’ in the future but won’t make an immediate difference when my boss gives me a ‘gold star’ on my next performance appraisal? Besides, no one person is responsible for reliability, so any effort I invest in reliability will be ‘lost in the noise’ anyway. And, of course, reliability will increase the budget and schedule today. Right? [Read more…]
Over the past few months, we’ve received some questions about accelerated life testing. There are bound to be more questions as ALT can be confusing to plan, conduct, or interpret. Let’s get together and address your questions related to ALT. [Read more…]
Creating a plan and generating information is part of reliability engineering, yet it’s not enough. To be a successful engineer, one must communicate well. This means we need to write, discuss, and present well. We are often called upon to examine failures and recommend solutions, examine a dataset and explain the finding, or conduct an experiment and detail the results. [Read more…]
What is supportability? Is it working out how many spare parts you will need (and when)? No. Is it working out how many maintainers or technicians you will need to keep your system working? Still no. What about working out what tools these maintainers or technicians need? No again. But many people think that this is what ‘supportability’ is. ‘Supportability’ is actually a characteristic of your product or system. Is the ‘ability’ for it to be ‘supported.’ And this can mean different things in different scenarios. It is also not a ‘number.’ If you have two comparable systems, but one needs fewer spare parts, is easier to maintain, needs fewer tools, has lots of sensors that give plenty of warning for maintenance, and so on … then it might be more supportable. But the main thing you need to ‘think about’ regarding supportability is that because it is a characteristic of a product or system … it has to be baked INTO the design. Want to learn more about how to do this? Join us for this webinar.
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A key element of reliability engineering is doing the right thing at the right time. When running an experiment or test, conducting an assessment, or performing an analysis, the method we use must fit the situation. Being busy does not add value; getting meaningful results does. [Read more…]
Everyone has heard of the ‘bell curve.’ Sports show hosts, teachers, scientists, and a bunch of other people routinely use the term ‘bell curve’ to describe uncertainty. But do you know where it comes from? It is not just a ‘pretty shape’ that seems to work, It comes from a really cool physical phenomena that we find everywhere. So, the ‘bell curve’ naturally aligns with how our primitive human brain often tries to characterize or visualize uncertainty. The other really cool thing about the bell curve (and lots of other curves that look like bells) is that if we find it in our reliability data, it automatically tells us where to look in order to improve reliability. If you want a basic introduction to one of the most common statistical concepts with NO EQUATIONS … this is the webinar for you!
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This is an overview of the six steps to achieve high reliability from Carl and Fred’s book. Creating and executing a reliability plan that assists the team in designing, manufacturing, and supporting meeting reliability objectives takes effort. Let’s discuss the details of that effort so that you can focus on the critical steps. [Read more…]
Some of you have heard of HALT (and I don’t mean someone asking you to stop). HALT is a very powerful form of testing that really helps us improve the robustness and reliability of new products. So what is HALT? HALT is a targeted test strategy to stress your amazing new product to (and beyond) its limits. Which means HALT will break your product (or prototype). Over and over again. Some people ask ‘so what … of course it was going to break when you pushed it that hard?’ But there is a method to this madness. And many organizations have used HALT to create amazing new products that are robust and reliable very quickly (with competitors struggling to understand why). Want to learn more? See you at this webinar!
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