Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Find all articles across all article series listed in reverse chronological order.
If colleges were businesses they would be right for hostile takeovers, complete with serious costcutting and painful reorganizations.
US News and World Report
COVID has forced universities to do online teaching. What’s the value add of spending $70K (USD) for online instruction, when you paid for sports, in-class instruction, and the college experience? In 2021 and 2022, we’ll find out as university students who have been taught online for a year or even longer.
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Today’s Gremlin – “The White Knight”, is a day-to-day hero, fixing what’s broken and returning the operation from panic. When things break, you really do need him, and he can be a hero, but couldn’t he be preventing those breakdowns?
The White Knight is the one you call when things have gone wrong. You need things fixed fast, regardless of the time of day, and he’s there for you. He works overtime if needed, he’s there when you need him, and he’s fast. Things do get fixed. But do they stay that way?
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In any organization, the absence of clear direction can lead to confusion, inefficiency, and stagnation. Direction setting—the process of defining a vision, establishing goals, and communicating a clear path forward—is one of the most critical functions of leadership. When done effectively, it empowers teams, drives progress, and ensures that everyone is working toward a shared purpose.
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Dear friends, we are happy to release this 85th video in our channel ‘Institute of Quality and Reliability’! In this video, Hemant Urdhwareshe has explained the concept of statistical tolerancing tolerance stack-up! Conventional Extreme Value Analysis (EVA) can result in increased manufacturing costs! Statistical tolerancing is more optimistic method of analysing tolerances and can reduce manufacturing costs! Concepts of loop diagram, additivity of variances are also explained briefly in the video with a practical application case study of tolerance stack-up analysis.
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Welcome to Part 4 of our Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) Case Study, where we take a deep dive into Condition Based Maintenance (CBM). CBM, also known as On-Condition Maintenance, is a proactive approach that allows us to detect Potential Failure Conditions and take corrective action before failure occurs. In this video, I explain:
This is a rather depressing title for an article specifically on the topic of Reliability. After all, Reliability relates to the Probability of Success hence the contradiction.
However, the contradiction is not so much one as Reliability Analysis depends on having access to failure data. In other words, if the equipment does not fail, it might be difficult or even impossible to perform an analysis. Of course, we can source other types of data that are not failure records, but this is not the common approach.
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In the span of our idea-to-scale series, we’ve navigated through the various phases of transforming a hardware-based product idea into a market-ready product. We’ve explored the crucial stages of design, planning, development, as well as controlled introduction. Now, we arrive at the pivotal point of Volume Manufacturing, where we will learn how it can be leveraged to increase efficiency, improve quality and lower costs to effectively scale your business.
In this final segment, we turn our focus to scaling a resilient supply chain and revisiting key concepts from earlier segments. These include Contract Manufacturer (CM) selection, tooling and fixturing, communication, and business systems. We’ll also include additional insights into production forecasting, test, and logistics and repair, with a focus on quality, delivery and cost-effectiveness.
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Predicting all failures in any system, including the automotive industry, is an inherently complex and challenging task. The inherent unpredictability of certain failure modes, coupled with the vast array of variables in operational environments, makes it impossible to foresee every potential failure. However, through strategic approaches and methodologies, it is possible to minimize major failures and reduce the infant mortality failure rate, thereby enhancing the reliability and safety of automotive products.
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A habit you should examine and stop.
At first, I wondered if MTBF use was addictive, yet I thought that comparison would belittle the very serious issues of those with addictive behaviors. Using MTBF does not generally cause a person harm, while poor decision based on it might harm the organization.
I find those that regularly employ MTBF do so without thinking about it too much. If someone mentions reliability, they think MTBF. Automatically.
Habits help us reduce cognitive load and make our life simpler. For example, do you need to focus on how to put on your shoes every morning? I’m personally happy my habit skills allow me to remember how to drive safely without the intense focus required the first time I got behind the wheel.
Let’s examine how to tell if someone has the Habit of MTBF use and what you can do about it. [Read more…]
In September 2022 the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) issued NIST IR 8286C. (1) As the C indicates, this is the third such cybersecurity risk management standard issued by NIST. NISTIR 8286A and 8286B provide guidance to stakeholders on assessing and managing cybersecurity risk in conjunction with Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) processes. This piece looks at the guidance provided under NIST IR 8286C.
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I read your article that compares maintenance costs to RAV and am inquiring to see what is your definition of ‘maintenance cost’ when measuring replacement asset value? Are you strictly referring to labor costs, or is this the cost of labor, services and capital equipment purchases to repair, replace or upgrade an existing machine?
Dear Tom,
In the example, ‘maintenance costs’ meant the direct and overhead maintenance costs – labor, parts, subcontract services and allocated overheads (i.e. supervision, management, associated infrastructure, etc. proportioned to direct labor hours) – incurred during the ‘normal’ operation of the car (i.e. the car is driven by a well-trained, responsible driver at the wheel). If you have a store/warehouse for maintenance parts then you add the proportionate cost of keeping and running the store to support the maintenance effort as part of the total cost of maintenance.
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Dear friends, we are happy to release our video on reliability allocation or apportionment. In this video, Hemant Urdhwareshe has explained concept of reliability allocation with two basic methods. Hemant has also explained the allocation process with a case study.
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Hi everyone! I’m Nancy Regan, and today I’m coming to you from the iconic pyramid of Chichen Itza in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. The ancient Mayans believed that their pyramid connected them to both the underworld and the sky—a symbol of balance and connection. This powerful idea got me thinking about Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) and the importance of leveraging our most valuable resource: equipment experts.
In this video, I’ll explain why equipment experts are crucial to the RCM process. They bring insights that historical data alone can’t provide, understanding how things fail, what causes them to fail, and how each failure matters —what we call consequences in RCM. Documenting their knowledge through RCM not only improves reliability but also preserves their invaluable expertise for the future.
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In the last blog, we discussed the importance of business systems including the perils of manual processes, common business systems used for an agile hardware product lifecycle, optimizing data flows, managing product data across systems, and tips for success.
Now, in this final blog in the controlled Introduction series, we discuss the importance of customer trials, identifying and developing trial customers, running the trials and how to leverage the learnings resulting from these trials to benefit your business.
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Manufacturing professionals who regularly apply Statistical Process Control (SPC) methods, such as X̄ and R charts, know the power of SPC to maintain control of both quality and cost. The standard practice emphasizes attention to variation, with operators trained to take corrective action whenever a process signals an out-of-control condition. Typically, this means adjusting a process input, verifying the correction, and resuming production.
However, not every out-of-control signal requires intervention, especially in processes where inherent variation is extremely small and product quality is consistently high. In some cases, such as tooling wear or small material variations, process center shifts may occur outside of the operator’s ability to correct. Responding to these shifts with standard SPC rules can lead to overcorrection, lost productivity, and increased variation.
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