on Product Reliability

An executive asked me how to make a “perfectly reliable product.”

I told him that program would look a lot like an embarrassing market failure that could put a company out of business.

This was not the response he was expecting.  I chose to elaborate before he just walked away.

The investment of time, dollars, and man power to create a “perfectly” reliable product would force such a compromise on all other aspects of the product and program that any type of market success would almost be impossible.  I can only think of two types of products that could benefit from an approach of creating perfect reliability. The two I am thinking of are the Mars Rover ‘Curiosity” and a nuclear power plant. The desire for “perfect reliability” would be driven by either an avoidance of massive loss of life (not just a few lives) or loss of billions of dollars by a single failure mode.

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The Titanic had two sister ships, the Britannic and the Olympic. There was a woman called Violet Jessop, a nurse and a cruise liner stewardess that worked on all three. (That’s her, to the right->)

1. The Olympic crashed into a warship whilst leaving harbor but was able to make it back.
2. She was on the Titanic as it sank and is referenced in the Titanic film, a stewardess that was told to set an example to the non english speaking passengers as the ship sank. She looked after a baby on lifeboat 16 until being rescued by the Carpathia the next day.
3. It’s not known what exactly caused the sinking of the Britannic but the lifeboats hit the water too early. As the ship sank, the rear listed up and a number of the lifeboats were sucked into the propellers. Violet had to jump out of the lifeboat she was in and sustained a serious head injury, but survived.

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Toyota just issued a recall of all 1993 Toyota Camrys. Tokyo-  “It’s simply time for drivers to move on.” Then added “We understand that the 1993 Camry was tremendously dependable, but, honestly, there’s just no excuse for driving a 24-year-old car at this point. You could have updated features like bluetooth and a backup camera” said Toyota spokesman Haruki Kinoshita. While Toyota is reportedly confining its recall to the 1993 Camry, it also issued a warning to owners of 1994 to 1998 models alerting them to the fact that they were really starting to push it.
I can’t take full credit for that joke.  But like most satire it is inspired by a reality. I actually just walked by this car in a parking lot a few hours ago. [Read more…]

The term “Physics of Failure” is used when referring to the underlying mechanism that has driven a failure mode.  I have issue with the words “Physics” in this phrase as a “catch all.”  This implies we are only working with physical or kinematic interactions when studying product wear-out. Wear-out failures are rooted in chemistry as well.  Most electronic failures are chemistry based.   If a failure can be tracked back to a material property change, dielectrics, brittleness, transformation (oxidation), strength loss based on property change without fatigue, we have a chemistry problem. Mechanical physics does not play a part in understanding the input and response relationship or assist with creating an accelerated life model in these cases.

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It can be hard as a reliability engineer to influence the greater organization.  Reliability engineers have that awkward dynamic of not just executing the tools they are expert in but directing others to incorporate them into their own process.  If the perception is that reliability engineers only instruct others what to do, like a coach, then the perception may be that “they don’t have skin in the game”. If they take complete ownership of reliability activities the effectiveness of any tools influence on the product greatly diminishes. “DfR principle #1, You can’t “Design for Reliability” if the design team isn’t using reliability tools in the design process.

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I didn’t create this image but I thought it was an interesting idea. A consumer has captured  a niche group of manufactures that are basing their brand on “service for life.”  The forever outfit.

I saw this the same day that Tesla came out with their semi truck announcement.  A few things that caught my attention from that announcement was how they emphasized reliability and low maintenance in their product profile.  “The brake pads will last forever” and “The drivetrain has a 1 million mile warranty.”

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A common tool for comparing if two populations are the same is the “student t-test.”  This is often used in reliability, and science, if we want to investigate if a factor has caused a change in a respnse.

A population was assembled in location “A”.  Another population was assembled in location “B”.  Population “A” has an average defect rate of 4%.  Population “B” has an average defect rate of 5.5%. Does the location of assembly affect defect rate?  That’s just a big argument unless we can project the statistical likelihood that what we have measured is not just an overlap of noise. [Read more…]

The bane of our existence is one thing, generating enough data to demonstrate statistical confidence.  Every reliability engineer, every project manager, every Director and VP all have the same moment of panic in a new product development program.  In synchronicity they put their head in their hand.  It’s when the required number of test units and calendar time to demonstrate a required confidence in the reliability goal is calculated.  It’s usually about ten times more units than can be acquired and about two times longer than the entire product development program timeline.

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I was teaching a class on Reliability 101 a few years ago and it turned out to be one of those great classes where debate and discussion would just pop up all over the place.  I frequently start my classes with “If I end up being the only one speaking today I am going to take that as an indication of complete failure in having engaged you in this material.”  So I was loving that this group were starting to debate each other on the material we were covering.  I wasn’t even in some of the conversations.  This rich environment is where I just spurted out one of my more memorable reliability quotes. [Read more…]