Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
All articles listed in reverse chronological order.
A risk management plan has to meet your organizations needs as the organization identifies, manages, and mitigates potential and actual risks. The ISO 31000 framework does not detail how an organization should plan or what elements are required for an effective plan.
This short article outlines a few details that may comprise a starting point as you build a risk management plan within your organization. Or, the suggestions here may help you review and improve your existing plan. [Read more…]
In the prior article, Process Capability IV, vehicle wheel toe alignment showed excessive variation. Because the vehicle assembly process is very long and involves many steps, the toe alignment problem required brainstorm which serial production steps, factors, and levels could be responsible for the variation. The most likely process steps were examined and the problem area identified as a wheel alignment machine that needed maintenance and calibration.
Apparently, my lovely wife is one of the best at finding stress testing limits of kitchen blenders, or we are unlucky at getting blenders that had some latent defect. She has discovered the destruct limit of 3 blenders within months of use. She does not do in the formal HALT methodology, as they break in what most would consider normal use conditions. It may have been a valid HALT evaluation if she had started with soft or easy to blend materials, starting with o ice or nuts and measured the time to reach its destruct limit. [Read more…]
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…]
The condition that occurs when an Engineer, Supervisor, or Manager who once had responsibility for the reliability of your assets gets promoted or transferred to the operations side of the group.
Symptoms of Reliability Amnesia
1. Ignoring information from Condition Based Technologies that clearly show a major component is in the process of failing. The subject may be overheard saying something like “I can’t afford to stop the line now, if we do I won’t make my production goals.” [Read more…]
Another name for this could be – Creativity in Design of Experiments. But our title seems to fit better. With DOE being a “structured” approach, how can it possibly provide creativity? In our New Product Development work, we have used DOE to experience creative breakthroughs. [Read more…]
Centrifugal Pump Life Extension – The Volute
What readers will learn from this article.
Guest Post by Greg Caroll (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
There is a gaggle of Management Consultants pushing the 20th century mantra of Good Management Practice as a panacea to all the ill of today’s business environment. The key plank in most of these methodologies is that old chestnut “the PDCA cycle” for Continuous Improvement. If your consultant wears this as a badge, run a mile
Business Management is no longer just about Financial Accounting or Office Administration. And Best Practice is not just someone’s vague opinion. Leading businesses from around the world have, thru the international standards organization, put down a comprehensive set of guidelines for a broad range of Systems Management areas covering the lifecycle management Best Practices. [Read more…]
The McNemar test is a nonparametric statistical test to compare dichotomous (unique) results of paired data.
If you are comparing survey results (favorable/unfavorable) for a group of potential customers given two ad campaigns, or evaluating the performance of two vendors in a set of prototype units, or determining if a maintenance procedure is effective for a set of equipment, this test permits the detection of changes.
The McNemar test is similar to the χ2 test. The McNemar only works with a two by two table, where the χ2 test works with larger tables. The χ2 test is checking for independence, while the McNemar test is looking for consistency in results.
Let’s examine an example where a group of people are surveyed about a prototype design, before and after a presentation. [Read more…]
Think this was written about the elusive Sasquatch? Loch Ness monster, maybe? What about the abominable snowman?
Nope, nope, and nope. This was referring to good engineering managers.
In his opinion piece, Juan Pablo Dellarroquelle argues that engineers that are good at their jobs have little incentive to move into a managerial role because they are already influential leaders in an individual contributor role.
Alternatively, he argues, engineers who are weak technically are promoted to managers because of their organizational skills.
While this may be the case in some circumstances, in general – I disagree. [Read more…]
In my previous article we established the lean product development goal statement as:
We then derived high-level objectives as follows:
This post provides a list of my process capability articles, a short description and a link. The goal is to make it easy for the reader to locate any of the articles. It is recommended to read these articles in the order presented. This post will be updated when additional posts are written on the Process Capability topic.
This post provides a list of my telematics analytics articles, a short description and a link. The goal is to make it easy for the reader to locate any of the articles. It is recommended to read these articles in the order presented. This post will be updated when additional posts are written on this topic.
I’m facilitating an RCM Analysis this week in a second-floor conference room that overlooks a company courtyard complete with manicured landscaping, picnic tables, park benches and walking path complete with distance markers. While this park like setting has been mostly empty the first few days this week today there is a group of 30 people milling around. Some small groups of 2 or 3 are clustered together talking and most everyone is checking out their smart phone for various unknown reasons. I can’t help but wonder what is going on so I ask the team I’m working with why so many people are in the courtyard. [Read more…]
With today’s software and problem solving methodologies, there is no reason to be teaching or using Taguchi methods. They have a range of limitations and assumptions, and better options exist and are easy to use. Watch this video to learn more! Avoid falling for the sales pitch for yesterdays tools. No reason to limit your options and your learning. [Read more…]