Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
I wonder how many product tests have been undertaken and nothing has been done with the results? Maybe development activities have moved on before any results are available? Maybe the test results didn’t provide the answers that were needed? Maybe the test wasn’t focused on the critical issues. In other words, cost, time and resources were wasted.
I will present a better way to ensure value is delivered and test results are acted upon. [Read more…]
A specific reliability plan may include any number of specific tasks. To build an effective plan you need the knowledge of the individual tools and techniques, plus how they may fit together to create an overall plan to achieve your goals.
Of course, this starts with establishing complete reliability goals that include function, environment characterization, probability of success (reliability) and duration.
I recommend setting specific goals for setup/installation (early life), the warranty period and the expected customer use period. [Read more…]
There are a lot of reliability tools.
From FMEA to FTA, from ALT to HALT, from derating to sneak circuit analysis. We also have a lot of acronyms. We cannot afford to do all the tasks, so which do we select and why?
Each activity has some reason for existing. Each has some question that it helps answer. HALT helps to find what will fail. ALT helps to determine when failures may occur.
Knowing what each tool is capable of doing is a start. Knowing what you need to know is essential.
The easy answer is very often. Each time you want to know how long a product will operate. The accompanying question on how well the estimate will match actual performance makes the real answer more difficult.
We regularly and intuitively do reliability predictions all the time. When starting a car at the beginning of a trip, we estimate the ability of the vehicle to complete the journey. When we purchase a phone, we expect it to operate for at least two years (your expectations may differ).
During the design process, we may have formal or informal useful life expectations. It is not knowing if our decisions related to the design will fulfill the lifetime expectations that leads to the desire to know how well the resulting system will operate. We also may need to estimate warranty or maintenance costs, thus knowing what is likely to fail becomes important.
In general, knowing how long something will operate without failure provides the feedback we need to create a viable system that meets our business and customer reliability expectations.
In short, we do reliability predictions regularly to gauge is we are making good decisions. [Read more…]
Reliability is an attribute of an item. The item, with its design, assembly, and use, has a finite probability of working over some duration.
We deliberately attempt to create items that meet our and our customer’s expectations concerning that probability and duration. We maintain and operate our equipment with an expectation of successful performance.
We and our customers are let down when a failure occurs. We do not enjoy the benefits of the item’s value. [Read more…]
In a common definition used by engineers reliability is a probability of success. It is the chance of an item operating as expected over some duration in a given environment. In this case, we have probability as part of the definition of reliability.
Reliability in common use definition includes trustworthiness, dependability and similar definitions. It’s more than how many times your friends help you move to a new apartment, it’s a feeling or sense we have concerning our ability to count on our friends for the help.
Have you ever wished your organization would work together to achieve a reliable product? Not just a few individuals and a heavy reliance on the reliability team to focus on highlighting and fixing reliability issues.
Some organizations tend to react to reliability issues. Prototype testing and field returns continue to surprise the team. The worst organization fall into finding someone to blame. Better organizations set to work to understand the problem and quickly resolve the issue. Some have better ‘fire departments’ than others.
Responding quicker is not really the best way to deal with reliability. [Read more…]
As we continue to find and improve ways to master our environment, accomplish tasks, communicate, move, heal, etc. we continue to discover new materials, processes, and products. Emerging technologies often promise
They also may last longer.
As a minimum, they should last long as current solutions or longer or provide another compelling reason to use the new technology. [Read more…]