Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Sometimes I see images that speak strongly to how reliability engineering affects us everyday. Think of how many items you own or use systems that you wouldn’t touch/interact with if you couldn’t be absolutely sure they would work as expected. I wouldn’t use my microwave if I thought there was a 1/1000 chance it would catch fire. The amount of faith I have in traffic lights working correctly is astounding. If they malfunction it could be fatal.
In 1942 the US Air Force needed to figure out a way to get more of their bombers home. They were losing them at an atrocious rate. They made a study of where the returning bombers were being hit, it was a great data set. But they made a big mistake in interpreting that data. It was Abraham Wald, a mathematician, who corrected their assumptions and created the “Survivorship Bias principal.” This principle has changed the way we look at data sets and trends. It is a concept that I apply to field failure data sets regularly. More than once it has caught evidence of core issues that would have otherwise been missed. [Read more…]
The clock in my ’79 Porsche 911 works perfectly. I don’t remember the last time I set it. Maybe I made a small adjustment six months ago, a year ago, don’t know? A modern day quartz clock does this no problem, a mechanical spring clock might struggle in such a rough environment. So was it quartz or mechanical? the ’70s was when quartz came on the scene, so either was a possibility. First I wanted to find out if it was ever replaced or serviced. So what did I do? I contacted the previous two owners. One purchased it new in ’79 and the other owned it for a five year period before I bought it. Neither recalls it ever being serviced or having a problem.
I can’t believe it! They took it to the next level, They hired a sniper, and he was good, he got a kill shot with one round.
I’m in the hull of my boat doing what should be the easiest “Spring prep before launch” I have ever done. I got everything set up a week earlier to make this ritual of “man vs machine” as easy as possible. I even took care of the squirrel problem from the previous year. [Read more…]
Adam and Fred discussing the Intent and Delivery Anchor method
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When it comes to product development, most technology companies understand the importance of reliability. In particular, the engineering teams usually have everything they need to design a reliable product, including the right testing tools and analysis methods.
At times, though, there can be problems. A product doesn’t ship on time. Or if it ships on time, it fails in the field.
Adam and Fred discussing a new way to ensure all the product goals guide the program all the time
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Adam and Jordon Suls discussing how reliability engineers find the reliability engineering profession
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Adam and Kishor Trivedi discussing new ways to model software reliability.
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Adam and Tim Gaens discussing how reliability engineering can often be a team of one in an organization.
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Adam and Keith Clark discussing the powerful impact of creating a new role in the organization, The Reliability Czar.
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Adam and Joe Schwendler discussing how “corner case use” in testing can quickly identify robustness weaknesses and most importantly wear out.
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Adam and Jessica discussing how the culture of reliability and maintenance can have a dramatic effect in how production and field issues are resolved.
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