Articles

Find all articles across all article series listed in reverse chronological order.

Material Selection and Reliability

Physical products are made up of materials.

The materials including metals, polymers, adhesives, and many others experience loads and stresses during assembly, transport, storage, and use.

Selecting the right materials such that they both meet the needs of the customer and are sufficiently reliable relies on understanding how the material will respond to the applied stresses over time.

As with parts selection, one way to determine if a material is suitable for your application and end use is to monitor the material’s performance over time in your products. The trouble is it also transfers the risk of failure (the unknown risk of failure) to the customer.

In many cases this is unacceptable. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 7 Comments

Field Data Analysis First Look

Field data analysis starts with the collection of data.

In a previous article, we used a Nevada chart to gather the counts per month of field failure data. The chart also provides the necessary data to account for how many units have not failed as of yet.

The Nevada chart on its own is just a table of numbers and does not reveal patterns of the changing nature of failure rates over time. Are we experiencing early life failures or wear-out related failures?

We need to conduct some data analysis to learn what message the data contains. [Read more…]

by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Exposure Reduction and Mitigation

Guest Post by Geary Sikich (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Exposure to threats, hazards, and risks leads to vulnerabilities that an organization must deal with.

Commonly these are addressed via a mitigation process. Once mitigation is accomplished, often times the organization feels that the risk, threat, hazard does not need to be revisited. However, as a result of the mitigation efforts on the part of the organization, the risks, threats, hazards reconfigure and re-emerge in a different form.

In order for mitigation to be successful, it has to be a constant and ongoing process that produces a resilience to the negative effects of risks, threats, and hazards that are realized. [Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini 4 Comments

Flange Bolting-up Practices

What readers will learn in this article:

Bolts and studs behave like springs when loads are applied.
Gaskets behave like springs when loads are applied
Introduced to the use of force diagrams to explain and analyze bolt and gasket behavior.
Bolt torque-up issues and considerations.
The effects of thread surface finish on friction.
Proper bolting practices, sequence, and methods.

[Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 1 Comment

Part Selection Process and Reliability

A product or system may fail for many different reasons.

One cause is a faulty part. A component is susceptible to failure when either improperly used in the design or is a damaged or flawed component. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Reliability Management & Risk

What is reliability management? Reliability Engineering? Would a product design or an organization benefit with a focus on reliability management and engineering? What is the value of a focus on reliability?

Any organization, that develops and produces products, has resource limits. It may be talent, capabilities, time, funding, or some combination of these.

Yet, the goal to create a product that meets customer expectations includes the concept of product reliability. The product should provide the expected functions over time, without failure. This expected product reliability occurs, even if the design requirements and advertising do not explicitly mention product reliability. [Read more…]

by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Drivers of Change: Geopolitical, Energy and Commodity Risks: BCP Implications

Guest Post by Geary Sikich (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Unpredictability is the New Normal

As the world approaches 7 billion in population this year, there is an ever-increasing demand for food, energy and a voice in how things are run. How do these changes affect business continuity planners, you may be asking?

The simple answer is, they will have far-reaching effects on how business continuity planning is conducted.

No longer can we be satisfied with the assurance that our “hot site” is available, or that we can maintain business operations in the face of a pandemic; or that we can deal with the aftermath of a natural disaster. [Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini 3 Comments

Protecting Bearings from Dust

What readers will learn in this article:

Bearings in dusty environments require added protection against dust ingress.
The use of shaft seals and how they protect bearings.
Eight dust ingress control methods for bearings.
Good contamination reduction practices when assembling bearings
and parts.

Dusty surroundings are one of the most difficult environments for bearings.

In equipment handling powders or in processes generating dust the protection of bearings against contamination by fine particles requires special consideration. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

10 Ways to Find Reliability Value

Most everyone agrees that improving a product or process reliability is a good thing. It’s good for customers, factories, and our business. And sometimes it’s difficult to answer the question,

‘What is the value of that reliability activity?’

What if your boss asks you what value you provide to the organization? Your answer may to harder to compose than you think.

How would you quantify your skills, experience, and knowledge and your role within the complex formal and informal working environments? [Read more…]

by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Risk Assessment: What Future are you Planning for?

Guest Post by Geary Sikich (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Introduction

There exists an overabundance of guidance for conducting risk assessments. Yet, it seems that we still have difficulty in getting risk assessments to reflect the appropriate level of concern for the identified risks that we are assessing. We also tend to view risk in relation to the place where we are employed and the industry that we work in. When we look at risk assessment from this perspective it should be clear that we are missing the point precisely, or at best, are being too narrowly focused, when it comes to assessing risk for our organizations. [Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Open Trickle Chutes for Damp Bulk Product

What readers will learn in this article:

The flow of bulk materials through chutes is affected by internal properties of the bulk product.
Friction exists between the chute walls and a moving product.
Momentum and velocity must be maintained when running bulk
materials through chutes.
Bulk materials chute design and use considerations.

For the effective flow of a cohesive (sticks to itself) product, a chute must be designed to maintain momentum & velocity. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 1 Comment

DFX as an Approach

When products were crafted one at a time, the design and manufacturing process was often done by the same person. The craftsman would design and build a chest of drawers or carriage.

Some trades would employ apprentices to learn the craft, which included design. Larger projects may include an architect or lead designer along with a team of engineers.

Yet the shop or site for the railroad engineer or bridge was not far allowing close communication between the ironsmith and design team. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

5 Steps to Building a Reliability Culture

Reliability is not the sole responsibility of the reliability engineer but results from nearly everyone in an organization making decisions that move toward the desired product reliability performance.

As a reliability professional, I often find it necessary to explore ways to leverage my knowledge of these areas to change the culture within an organization to create a sustainable program that achieves reliable products time and again. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Descriptive Models of the Design Process

I’ve often said, “reliability occurs at the point of decision.”

At the point of design during the design process. At each and every decision.

The design team of engineers establishes the bulk of the reliability capability early in the design process. The team’s decisions about materials or shape, concerning inventions or outsourcing, about how and where to build the product, and many more decisions impact the final product’s reliability performance.

Reliability is designed into the product right from the start. [Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini 2 Comments

Changing the Service Duty of a Pump

What readers will learn in this article.

Centrifugal pumps can be moved to a new service.
The impeller size, impeller speed, and motor power need to match the new service.
That Similarity Law formula is used in calculating the new impeller size, speed, and motor power.
Introduction to centrifugal pump curves and their use.

When there is a need to determine a new service duty for a centrifugal pump, and no performance curves are available, the recommended method is to use the Similarity Laws. These laws are derived by the use of [Read more…]