Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
A listing in reverse chronological order of articles by:
So I wrote about how Mercedes has crummy reliability per Consumer Reports. I then threw a zinger at the end of the article saying I do have a Mercedes in the stable. So here is moment in time with her before we put her away for the winter last year. You will see the love/hate bloom and a benchmark with a 40 year old Japanese car. [Read more…]
Leading reliability efforts is a hard road. The resource required to improve reliability is significant. The resource to demonstrate reliability is gargantuan.
Mercedes used to be known for their outstanding reliability. They were the benchmark for 80 years ,no exageration. The new CLA250 model which is their base model has a reliability that is 140% less than the average rated car. What??? [Read more…]
Kishor forward the link to the recording to me and suggest it may of interest to the Accendo Reliability community. I agree. He does a great job discussing the topic and a clear and practical manner.
The video abstract is:
IEEE Life Fellow and Hudson Chair in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University Prof. Kishor S. Trivedi visited Alibaba’s Hangzhou campus on Dec. 8th and talked about technical systems’ reliability and availability assurance methods based on probabilistic models. [Read more…]
There are a few ways to demonstrate statistical confidence in reliability of a design. Each has it reasons for selection. here are three of my favorites [Read more…]
OK, let’s admit it. We don’t always make the best decisions. And of course, those around us don’t either. And yet, to deliver a product with all the best features to a customer or market, at a competitive price and in time to make the sale, and that also will have good reliability and long life, requires everyone to make the right decisions in a timely fashion all along the way. It doesn’t take many adverse decisions to introduce field issues, increase warranty claims and lessen product life.
Reliability management and engineering is all about using the best tools to guide our decision-making. Becoming a good reliability engineer, or decision-maker of any kind, is about learning those tools – including when and where to use them.
I recently came across this announcement that HP is going to develop computer systems and peripheral devices that are optimized for environments where they are cleaned frequently, often medical environments. In the medical and scientific fields cleaning solutions are a significant stress for plastics, inks and touch control surfaces. It’s a smart strategy to evaluate where your products are used and optimize your test use cases. It most often will lead to more accurate test results and reliability projections. It may, as well, lead to a market opportunity that was previously unknown, and if you are the first among your competitors to acknowledge this need and create a specialized or derivative product you now grabbed a portion of the market that you may have not previously held.
A few others
-Adam
In most organizations being a reliability engineer is a lonely position. I like to think we’re so effective that one or just a small team is all any an organization needs.
As with any engineering position, we have specialized training and skills. We view the world and problems just a little differently than others. Then we use statistics, which tends to future isolate us from our peers.
For over 50 years there have been professional societies focused on supporting the professional education of reliability engineers. For nearly as long there have been trade journals and newsletters. Longer for technical journals and other scientific and engineering organizations and journals. [Read more…]
I was asked “Do you know about Singularity design?” I hadn’t heard the term in that context before.
It’s the concept of not approaching design from multiple disciplines. The design process is done with an approach and knowledge base of all needed disciplines at once and in conjunction. The electrical system isn’t designed by an electrical team and the mechanical by a mechanical team. The “Design Team” 
designs both simultaneously. Team members knowledge might be rooted in one discipline but there is clearly no boundary to their knowledge of other disciplines. This would be a mechanical engineer who has designed a PC board before.
Intuitively, the emphasis in reliability to achieve a reduction in warranty and in-service costs results in some minimal increase in development and manufacturing costs. However, use of the proper techniques during the proper life cycle phase will help to minimize total life cycle cost (LCC).
To minimize total LCC, your organization should do two things:
We make decisions every day. Our project teams and organizations have many individuals making decisions every day. Most of these decisions have little to do with product reliability, yet a surprising number of design, marketing, production, and customer care decisions that have a direct impact on product reliability performance.
As a reliability professional, do you work to make better decisions? Do you work to enable the individuals designing, producing, marketing, etc your organization’s products to make better decisions concerning reliability?
If not, why?
Let’s outline a few ways to estimate the value to you and your organization to improve decision making concerning reliability. [Read more…]
The Plan: Saturday and Sunday was skiing in Vermont with the family, back Sunday night, everyone off to school Monday morning, then to the airport to get to Miami, Tuesday and Wed meetings down there, then fly out Wed night so I’m back to teach classes Thur and Fri here in Boston. Easy Peesie!
Actual: Finish ski trip feel a little “strange” on flight down to Miami, slight chills. Tuesday do meetings just barely, Tuesday night it hits like a freight train, The Flu, or Malaria, Aliens. On Wednesday the freight train had fully passed over me so it stopped and spent Wed backing up over me again. Thursday it went forward again over a pile of human jello. I’m not flying out for the clases on Thur and Fri, or anytime soon for that matter. Just getting home is my mission for the week.
Modular subsystems in a wheelhouse technology may or may not be a staple in your industry. There are some industries where they are not a standard practice and there are industries where without them, you can’t be a competitor. Of course there is everything in-between.
First let’s define what a modular subsystem is for this discussion. A modular subsystem is an assembly that is designed to be integratable into multiple products. For the automotive industry this could be a transmission. Each car model a manufacturer makes does not have a unique transmission design. There may be six transmission types that cover 20 car models.
I just came back from one of the best RAMS conferences I have attended (In my over 10 years of attending). I was fortunate enough to present a paper on “Balancing Reliability Goals in the Product Development Process”. The questions I received were great! The higher level management of how reliability integrates into product programs is the next big advancement for our discipline.
-Adam
