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What will Advance Reliability Engineering?

What will Advance Reliability Engineering?

In all aspects of engineering we only make improvements and innovation in technology by building on previous knowledge. Yet in the field of reliability engineering (and in particular electronics assemblies and systems), sharing the knowledge about field failures of electronics hardware and the true root causes is extremely limited. Without the ability to share data and teach what we know about the real causes of “un-reliability” in the field, it is more easily understood why the belief in the ability able to model and predict the future of electronics life and MTBF continue to dominate the field of electronics reliability

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Product Reliability Design Guidelines

Product Reliability Design Guidelines

Product Reliability Design

One way to capture and disseminate reliability engineering related information and advice is through internal documents. This of course only works if they are both useful and used.

Focus on gathering and providing essential and meaningful information that will improve the reliability of your product. Another element that makes these design guidelines valuable is if they save time. Engineers love to save time. [Read more…]

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Software Defect Phase Containment

Software Defect Phase Containment

Software Defect Phase Containment

The software element of products continues to grow.

Likewise, the number of field failures due to software issues continues to grow. Writing code is relatively straight forward, and some may even say it’s fun.

The process of debugging, or finding and fixing software defects, is not fun. [Read more…]

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For Maximum Test Value, Take it to the Limit!

For Maximum Test Value, Take it to the Limit!

When we go to an automobile race such as the Indianapolis 500, watching those cars circle the track can get fairly boring. What is secretly unspoken is that everyone observing the race is watching for a race car to find and sometimes exceed a limit, finding a discontinuity. The limit could be how fast he enters a curve before the acceleration forces exceed the tires coefficient of friction, or how close to the racetrack wall, he can be before he contacts it and spins out of control. Using the race analogy, [Read more…]

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Approaches to Assess Customer Reliability Needs

Approaches to Assess Customer Reliability Needs

Approaches to Assess Customer Reliability Needs

Just asking a customer how reliable they want your product often provokes an honest answer. The customer, and you most likely, do not want any failures.

Failures are troublesome or in some cases dangerous.

You and your customers realize that not every unit produced will operate over a long and useful life. There is some chance that something will fail. The definition of ‘some’ is often vague. [Read more…]

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Reliability Role in Safety and Liability

Reliability Role in Safety and Liability

Reliability Role in Safety and Liability

The reliability engineer may have many roles within an organization.

You may be specialized and focused only on the analysis of field data. Or you may be a member of the organization’s strategic leadership team.

You might support one or more product development teams, or work with a team of reliability professionals supporting just one subsystem. [Read more…]

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Reliability Modeling using Monte Carlo

Reliability Modeling using Monte Carlo

Modeling Complex Systems and Their Variability

Monte Carlo relies on data that describes the variation of elements within the system. It also connects the elements such that they result is an estimate of performance.

For reliability modeling, this is easiest to imagine for a series system.

For a system with two elements in series, a very simple reliability block diagram multiples the expected reliability for each block to determine the system reliability value. Yet, it is possible to have both elements at the low end of the range of possible reliability values, or the high end or a mix.

That is the value of the Monte Carlo approach. [Read more…]

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Ethics and Your Work as a Reliability Engineer

Ethics and Your Work as a Reliability Engineer

Ethics relate to the moral correctness of a person’s behavior given the groups moral principles.

Society, in general, has a set of standard expectations to guide our behavior. This includes fundamentals such as not harming others or behaving in a deceitful manner.

Religious, professional and informal ‘codes’ document the set or principles which guide our behavior in line with moral correctness. [Read more…]

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A Brief Introduction to Fault Tree Analysis

A Brief Introduction to Fault Tree Analysis

Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) is a technique to explore the many potential or actual causes of product or system failure.

Best applied when there are many possible ways something may fail. For example, when my car doesn’t start, it could be a dead battery, faulty started, loose wire, no fuel, and on and on. [Read more…]

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2 Versions of Product Life Cycle Phases

2 Versions of Product Life Cycle Phases

Each organization creates their own version of a product life cycle.

Often there are phase gate reviews that signal a transition from one phase to the next. In general, each set of phases follows a common progression from idea to retirement.

There are many references that include a description of the life cycle phases, so let’s explore two of them. [Read more…]

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No Evidence of Correlation: Field failures and Traditional Reliability Engineering

No Evidence of Correlation: Field failures and Traditional Reliability Engineering

Historically Reliability Engineering of Electronics has been dominated by the belief that 1) The life or percentage of complex hardware failures that occurs over time can be estimated, predicted, or modeled and 2) Reliability of electronic systems can be calculated or estimated through statistical and probabilistic methods to improve hardware reliability. The amazing thing about this is that during the many decades that reliabilityengineers have been taught this and believe that this is true, there is little if any empirical field data from the vast majority of verified failures that shows any correlation with calculated predictions of failure rates.
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