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Using the “Five Whys”

Using the “Five Whys”

Getting to Root Cause with “Five Whys”

There is no more important task in an FMEA than correctly identifying the “Cause.” Finding the root cause is the heart and soul of FMEA procedure. When you have the right cause, it opens the door to solutions. When you have the wrong cause, nothing gets accomplished.

By continuing to ask “why,” the team will be able to discover the progression of cause-and-effect relationships behind a problem and the root cause that is below the surface.

Wisdom begins in wonder – Socrates

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MSA 5 – Gage Stability

Introduction

The gage measurements are expected to be stable, meaning the gage should provide consistent readings. Some random variation due to random error is expected. However, gage measurements change with time or because the gage is damaged. The gage stability can be checked by measuring a known reference.

In this article, it is shown how to use control charts to assess gage stability.

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Magic of Reliability

Magic of Reliability

Most senior managements don’t know that Reliability can get them high profits very quickly. And therefore high return on investment. Hyundai’s Ten Year Warranty. Their market share was going downhill for over ten years, suddenly it started to go upwards instead. All because of high reliability!

The impact of reliability extends far beyond reliability itself. It establishes the cost of warrants, repair, maintenance, logistics and the indirect costs of unavailability, downtime, and the COST OF SAFETY RECALLS which runs to hundreds of million dollars., and throughout the life of the product. This paper presents an outside-the-box view of how to get the best results by aiming at twice the life in the product specification and by preventing the high-risk failure modes resulting in an extraordinary return on investment, as much as 10,000%. [Read more…]

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MSA 4 – Gage Linearity

MSA 4 – Gage Linearity

Introduction

The prior article, MSA 3: Gage Bias, focused on defining and calculating a point estimate of gage bias. A method was presented to determine if the bias was statistically significant. If significant, the bias would be applied to the data as a correction factor.

This article discusses gage bias linearity over a measurement range.

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Death of a Reliability Engineer

Death of a Reliability Engineer

(Reproduced from the article “Death of a Reliability Engineer” by Dev Raheja, Reliability Review, Vol. 30, March 2010 with permission)

When I first wrote the article in March 1990, I implied an ‘F’ grade to reliability engineers. Now almost 20 years later, I would give them a “E’. Yes, there is a little improvement but nothing you can write to your mother about.

The MTBF cancer was wide spread and is still wide spread in the DoD. The only reason I upgraded the reliability engineer from F to E is because the MTBF in some industries is no longer used such as in the automotive industry. They use the failure rates instead to hide their shame.

Failure rate is just the reciprocal of MTBF. Good job! Same old corn flakes with a new product name! [Read more…]