Articles

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

Getting the Right Parts

Getting the right parts for your maintenance isn’t quite as easy as you might think. To begin with they must be included in your spares inventory and stocked on your site. If not, they must be purchased when needed. If you are reacting to a breakdown, you will need them in a hurry, and you may find yourself short. Why does that happen? And, what can you do about it? Missing parts can cost you time – time that the equipment is down and not producing. Your operators are idled and your supply chain folks are scrambling to help you. That increases maintenance and operating costs, reduces production output and reduces available working capital. Those parts are like gold to your operation!

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by Nancy Regan 1 Comment

The Biggest FMEA Mistake You Can’t Afford to Make!

In this video, I reveal one of the most common mistakes people make when writing Failure Modes in a Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA).

Too often, people confuse Failure Modes with Failure Effects, leading to wasted time and ineffective results. But don’t worry! I’ll show you how to avoid this by asking one simple question: “What specifically causes…?” This technique helps ensure you develop proactive strategies that improve equipment reliability, avoid unexpected downtime, and strengthen your overall maintenance plan

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by Joe Anderson Leave a Comment

Team Building: Strengthening Connections for Success

The power of a strong team cannot be overstated. Teams drive innovation, solve complex problems, and deliver results that no individual could achieve alone. Yet, successful teamwork doesn’t happen by chance—it requires intentional effort through team building.

Team building is the art and science of creating connections, fostering collaboration, and aligning individuals toward a common goal. While it’s often associated with trust falls and icebreaker games, effective team building goes far beyond these surface-level activities. It focuses on strengthening relationships, improving communication, and establishing a shared sense of purpose.

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by Hemant Urdhwareshe Leave a Comment

Sigma Level and Process Capability Indices

Dear friends, we are happy to release this interesting video to explain and illustrate the relationship between sigma level and process capability indices Cp and Cpk! Hemant Urdhwareshe, ASQ Fellow and Six Sigma Master Black Belt, explains this relationship with animations! We are sure, you will find this video interesting and useful!

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by Carl S. Carlson Leave a Comment

FMEA Quality Objective 9: Design Improvements

Progressive improvement beats delayed perfection. Mark Twain

In this article, I will outline how to evaluate an individual Design FMEA or Process FMEA against the FMEA Quality Objective for design improvements.

What is meant by “design improvement”?

An essential part of FMEA procedure is for the FMEA team to recommend and implement actions to reduce risk to an acceptable level. For Design FMEAs, this includes actions to improve the product design. For Process FMEA, this includes actions to improve the design of the manufacturing or assembly process. Of course, there are other types of actions that can be recommended, such as test improvements; but this quality objective is focused on design improvements. [Read more…]

by Ayaz Bayramov 4 Comments

Reliability Testing 101: Purpose, Timing and Value

I generally write articles about topics I personally struggled to understand from the sources available to us, such as books, online resources, and so on. I believe most technical concepts are fairly straightforward at their core, but the way we express ideas and translate our understanding into writing often makes them harder for others to grasp. That is an area where we can all continue to improve.

As part of that journey, my goal with the Breaking Bad for Reliability newsletter is to be a communicator of Reliability Engineering principles, and I am doing this mainly for two categories of people:

People who want to become reliability engineers but have minimal information about their responsibilities.
People or companies who want to hire reliability engineers but do not have a clear understanding of what they actually need, or what skills to focus on in their hiring process.

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by Fred Schenkelberg 5 Comments

The 3 Best Reasons to Use MTBF

This may seem an odd article for the NoMTBF site. Stay with me for a moment longer.

Over the years of speaking out on the perils of MTBF, there has been some pushback. A few defend using MTBF. Here are three of the most common (maybe not exactly the best, per se) reasons to use MTBF. [Read more…]

by Semion Gengrinovich Leave a Comment

How to Delay Wear Out?

To design more reliable electromechanical components and delay wear out, several strategies can be employed, focusing on material selection, design principles, and reliability testing.

Material Selection:

– Hardness: Selecting materials with high hardness can resist wear from abrasion and erosion. For example, ceramics like alumina (Al2O3) and silicon carbide (SiC) are highly resistant to wear and are suitable for components exposed to abrasive environments. [Read more…]

by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

End of Big Business as We Know It

The system is not working. That is how a paradigm shift begins: the established way of seeing the world no longer functions.
Matthew Fox – American Actor

COVID has created some big business winners. But, post-COVID it’s the end of many companies as we know them:

“The Coronavirus pandemic brought the global economy to a screeching halt this spring (2020), sparking fears of a corporate bloodbath. As the year ends, it’s clear that the crisis has rewired the economy in surprising ways and served up unexpected opportunities for some big businesses to prosper.”

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by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Contents of a Reliability Improvement Plan

A RELIABILITY IMPROVEMENT POLICY IS A DOCUMENT CONTAINING A SET OF PRINCIPLES TO GUIDE DECISION MAKING AND ACTIONS. IT TELLS HOW RELIABILITY WILL BE ACHIEVED IN AN OPERATION. IT COVERS THE WHOLE ASSET LIFE CYCLE AND SAYS WHAT WILL BE DONE AT EACH PHASE TO DELIVER RELIABILITY.

Unfortunately, we have been operating in a crisis manner without a reliability improvement policy. Have you samples of a Reliability Improvement Policy that I can use as a basis of crafting one for my organization — do you have anything to share?

As I have stated in the past, the materials you post have been a big blessing to my work. You have definitely empowered me with great information that I see changing the way people work.
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by Hemant Urdhwareshe Leave a Comment

Sigma Level and PPM Calculation on Excel

Dear friends, I am glad to release our technical video on the subject of ‘Sigma Level vs Defective Proportion and PPM’! In this video, I have tried to explain the definition of sigma level in the context of the relation between tolerance and standard deviation sigma. Sigma Level assessment is an essential step in Six Sigma projects. In this video, I have explained the logic of 1.5sigma shift as was developed in Motorola. The sigma level vs ppm calculations are explained and illustrated using an Excel screen recording. Hope you find this video interesting!

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by Nancy Regan Leave a Comment

Do We Analyze Every Failure Mode?

Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) Myths

True or False? Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) seeks to analyze every Failure Mode.

False! In this short video, I clarify that RCM provides specific criteria for selecting which Failure Modes to include in the analysis. Discover the four criteria that guide this selection process. They include those that:

Have happened before
Have not happened, but are a real possibility.
Have not happened, are unlikely to occur, but have severe consequences.
Are currently managed via proactive maintenance.

Join me, Nancy Regan, as we break down these criteria and enhance your understanding of RCM!

[Read more…]

by Christopher Jackson Leave a Comment

What is a (good) Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA)?

FMEAs are like diets. There is the ‘5-bite diet’ (no need to explain this one too much) that is so simple to understand, easy to initially say ‘yes’ to, but demonstrably impossible to maintain (bordering on dangerous). Then there is the ‘werewolf diet,’ which appeals to our inner hunter-gatherer that we think we still are, but beyond that, it makes no nutritional sense. There are diets that work well for one person and not well for another. And finally, there is usually (barring medical conditions) a perfectly feasible, sensible, sustainable diet that can work for you if it is tailored to your needs, physiology, and goals.

The reality is that we cannot be truly healthy without a ‘perfect’ diet that works for us. There could be more than one ‘perfect’ diet. There are plenty of ‘mediocre’ diets. And lots of ‘terrible’ diets.

If you are with me so far … welcome to the world of FMEAs!

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by Semion Gengrinovich Leave a Comment

NASA Spacecraft and a Unit Error

The Mars Climate Orbiter was a NASA spacecraft launched on December 11th 1998 as part of the Mars Surveyor ’98 program. Its primary mission was to study the Martian climate and atmosphere, map surface changes, and act as a communications relay for the Mars Polar Lander. The Orbiter aimed to monitor daily weather and atmospheric conditions record surface changes and search for water evidence to better understand Mars climate history. Unfortunately, a unit conversion error led to its destruction upon entering Mars atmosphere in September 1999.

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by Fred Schenkelberg 3 Comments

Teaching Reliability is Part of Your Role

Nearly everyone I’ve ever met doesn’t want or like their toaster to fail.

It will, and that is a bummer, as the quick and easy way to warm up the morning toast will be thwarted.

Failures happen. As reliability engineers, we know that failures happen. Helping others to identify potential failures, to avoid failures or to minimize failures is what we do best.

It is our ability to teach others about reliability engineering that allows us to be successful. [Read more…]