Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Chris and Fred discuss Markov Chain modeling. Where we model transitioning from one state to another – which is often used for availability. How and when do I use it? Does it work in today’s reliability applications? Listen here to learn more.
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Chris and Fred discuss the Reliability Management Tutorial that Chris and Carl Carlson (another Accendo contributor) will be delivering at the Reliability and Maintainability Symposium (RAMS) in Palm Springs later this month. This tutorial can contribute to you getting a certificate as well if you are attending. Like to learn more? Listen here.
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Chris and Fred discuss data analysis … specifically the first question we ask before we help someone with their data analysis project. Chris always asks – what is the decision that this data analysis will support? And Fred always asks – where did this data come from? The reason these questions are important is that you need to know what information you need before you construct an analysis to get that information. And you need to be confident in the results. A single data set can potentially create multiple information sets. And this depends on how you construct the analysis. Which based on the decision. Listen to this podcast if you would like to learn more.
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Chris and Fred discuss reliability leadership. What is reliability leadership? Writing a book? Putting together a few slides? The first thing to know is that there is a difference between a reliability manager and a reliability leader. A reliability manager will tend to oversee practices and processes that others have identified or put together. Reliability leaders come up with the rationale, the motivation, the linking with business outcomes and everything else that creates or sustains organizational change. You can have the ‘best’ reliability engineers – but without reliability leadership, you won’t make reliable products. Want to learn more? Listen to this podcast.
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Chris and Fred discuss the ‘gist’ of reliability. Fred was recently asked to be part of a panel to a number ‘hardware startups’ and was asked … what is the ‘gist’ of reliability? We try and answer that question as simply as possible in this podcast. The thing is … reliability will happen. Ignoring it doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Reliability is an outcome of your decisions and the design choices you make. The harder you work on it, the closer reliability will be to what you expect. So do you want to learn what the ‘gist’ of reliability is? Well, listen to this podcast.
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Chris and Fred discuss the concept of an ‘outlier.’ Depending on the definition, an outlier is something that is different, non-representative or somehow separate from the ‘main body’ of something. We often use the term ‘outlier’ when it comes to statistical analysis of something – specifically when we see something that is beyond what we expect to see. So what do we do with ‘outliers’ … particularly when it comes to reliability analysis? It may be tempting to exclude them (particularly if it makes the outcome of your analysis ‘better’!). We have not seen the exclusion of ‘outliers’ have a happy ending when it comes to reliability. Would you like to learn more? Listen to this podcast!
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Chris and Fred discuss the question posed to us by one of our listeners regarding the ‘flat’ bottom of the ‘bathtub curve.’ Just a bit of background – the ‘bathtub curve’ represents the hazard rate of a system. That is, it helps us understand the probability that a product that works ‘now’ will fail. The ‘flat’ part of the curve is often cited as the ‘random’ part of the curve where failure is caused by environmental overstress conditions. So how do we test for this part of the curve? … but hang on – is the ‘bathtub curve’ even a thing? Is it even relevant for the useful life of a product? If this intrigues you, listen to this podcast!
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Chris and Fred discuss one of the most popular interpretations of maintainability which is based on how long it takes to maintain something. We see so many textbooks and guides that focus on this metric as the only maintainability measure. But is this really all that matters? What about the number of technicians required? … the number of tools required? … the training required for these technicians? … the mass of these tools? Does reliability matter? Yes to all these things. But how does they relate to the time-based definition? They don’t. Listen to this podcast to learn more.
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Chris and Fred often hear at least one person (or a small group of people) challenge your ‘cultural’ reliability improvement initiative. We hear things like ‘but to make it very reliable, it becomes too heavy or expensive.’ We also hear things like ‘but to make it very reliable, we need to invest lots of money for something the customer won’t buy.’ If you boil their complaints down or get to the hub of their issue … they are really suggesting that we do ‘reliability things’ without thinking. A checklist of activities that may or may not be valuable. This could not be further from what actually happens in reality. It never happens. Listen to this podcast to learn more.
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Chris and Fred discuss how we balance … or incorporate new technology with reliability. Is reliability something that only comes with legacy or age? … as in old technology? Can you make a product that is based on new technology and have it reliable? … are these concepts mutually exclusive? If we look at this from an ‘asset management’ perspective, there is a movement out there that we need things like increasingly sophisticated sensing technology to ensure reliability, availability, throughput or whatever it is we are trying to improve. From a ‘developmental product’ perspective, does new technology mean ‘all bets are off’ when it comes to reliability? Well … we talk about these things in this podcast. ᐅ Play Episode
Chris and Fred discuss what it means to ‘fail.’ Not from a personal sense! But what does it mean for your product to fail. Engineering or design specifications describe what the product or system must do. So does failure simply occur when the product can no longer meet all these specifications? What if your product or system meets all these criteria – but your customer ‘thinks’ is has failed? We have seen many instances where a group of people who design and make products will vehemently argue that even if the customer thinks something has failed when it meets the specifications, then nothing is wrong. Is it? What do you think the customer will do? Do you think they will be ‘happy’? If this is a problem you come across, then listen to this podcast.
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Chris and Fred discuss when (and if) you can use a reliability test plan that you have used before. If it worked then … why won’t it work now? Won’t you save money, time and other things that you can get bonuses for? Well yes. We received a question from one of our listeners who asked why you might not want to test the product the same way. There are many good reasons why you wouldn’t want to do this. If you want to learn more, listen to this podcast.
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Chris and Fred discuss battery reliability issues and how batteries fail. This based on feedback from one of our listeners (thanks!) There is a lot of energy in batteries that if failure allows this energy to be able to ‘do something’ … then catastrophic failure is an understatement. But as with everything, it is all about the customer. Is failure (for example) when battery capacity reaches 80 per cent of its original value? Is this 80 per cent figure going to be the advertised capacity? If you would like to learn more, listen to this podcast.
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Chris and Fred discuss the difference between ‘environmental’ and ‘reliability’ testing … but is there a difference? This question was raised by one of our listeners – which means this is a topical question. A question that could apply to you. Now some may seem that we are dodging the question in this podcast – because we think it is all about intent and not a category. That is – every test should be an experiment. It should be constructed to answer a question, or provide information for a specific decision. And once you focus on the information you are trying to provide – what is the point in classifying something as ‘environmental’ versus ‘reliability’ testing? Each test could conceivably be neither, one, or both. Listen to this podcast if you want to learn more.
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MTBF stands for ‘mean time between failure.’ This sounds intuitively easy to understand. But … if you haven’t taken the time to understand MTBF, and your organization relies on the reliability of its products, you are almost certainly in trouble. [Read more…]