Fred Schenkelberg — Thought Leader

Author of <a href="/creprep/">CRE Preparation Notes</a>, <a href="/on-product-reliability/musings">Musings</a>, <a href="/articles/nomtbf/">NoMTBF</a>, <a href="/book-author/fred-schenkelberg/">multiple books & ebooks</a>, co-host on <a href="/series/sor/">Speaking of Reliability</a>, and speaker in the <a href="/series/sor/">Accendo Reliability Webinar Series</a>.

This author's archive lists contributions of articles and episodes.

by Fred Schenkelberg 2 Comments

The Basics of Vibration and Shock

Did you shake a wrapped gift as a child?

Sometimes the rattling sound may indicate the hidden contents. A sweater from Grandma would make a muffled sound, while a new Lego set would rustle the many parts.

Your customers may not shake the package to guess its contents, yet your product will experience vibration and shock.

The environments of assembly, transpiration, use, maintenance, etc all include shock and vibration inputs to your product. The operation of your product may include producing vibration and shock loading across the product.

Understanding the basics of vibration and shock will assist you to design your product to operate as expected in the noisy, shaky world.

The rattling about your product experiences is just one of the many environmental and use factors. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 5 Comments

Starting a Career in Reliability Engineering

Reliability engineers all have a start.

A point zero.

The transition point from pursuing something else, or nothing at all, then we begin our journey as a reliability engineering professional.

Getting started can be difficult and at times overwhelming.

Then you find Accendo Reliability and there is a lot of great content, maybe too much. So, this short article has the intent to create a starting point for you.

Plus, for those well along in their career, a request.

What is your advice to those just starting their career? My plan is to gather the advice from this community and assembly a start here guide just for those just starting their career.

Leave a comment below with your words of wisdom. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 9 Comments

Introduction to Thermal Cycling Life Testing

Materials expand or contract with temperature change. Water expands as it freezes, whereas steel contracts as it cools.

This motion can limit the life of your system.

Materials and mechanical engineers include the expected motion into their designs, well the better engineers do.

Even centuries ago, craftsmen used expansion slots or features when attaching wooden table tops to their frames.

The motion due to temperature change will occur and has the potential to create immense strain within your product. [Read more…]

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5 Ways You Know a Reliability Program is Working

When your reliability program is working well, it may be difficult to recognize the benefits incurred.

Likewise, when the program is not working, it is obvious.

As you work to improve your program, keep in mind you may need to include elements to ensure your efforts remain visible.

I don’t mean staging field issues that you can solve quickly, rather that you are able to show the impact you and your program make to the organization. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 8 Comments

Introduction to High-Temperature Life Testing

A common reliability test involves ‘baking’ a few units.

Various standards list temperature, duration, and sample size requirements.

When the units survive the test, meaning there are no failures, what does that mean?

How do you interpret a system or component life test using high temperature?

Do the results suggest your product is reliable? Maybe it is maybe it isn’t.

Let’s examine one way to design and interpret high-temperature testing. [Read more…]

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Reliability Questions to Ask Your Suppliers

Here’s a question for you: Do you ask your suppliers the right questions concerning reliability?

Probably not.

If you are getting the right information from your suppliers, then you would enjoy few supplier related field issues, or as little downtime or low warranty costs.

Asking the right set of questions will help you gain the understanding you need to improve your reliability performance. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 2 Comments

Overview of Benchmarking

Benchmarking is the systematic process of observation and analysis.

The evaluation of a project, method or process best practices as performed by recognized industry leader may reveal improvement opportunities for your organization.

Benchmarking may focus on diverse business processes and with both internal and external subjects.

The intent is to understand what makes the subject’s process work well.

Understanding a system that operates well may reveal the elements in your process that may benefit with a change.

Keep in mind that not all best practice processes may apply to your specific situation. (Lapide, 2005) [Read more…]

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Rewards and Incentives Have an Impact On Reliability

A maxim of business management is to measure what is important.

The focus on aligning metrics, rewards, and incentives is not a new concept. Many businesses create target focused incentives with the expectation it will assist achieving those important business goals.

In many cases, simply monitoring a metric improve the team’s ability to achieve a specific goal.

In some cases, though, achieving the goal and associated incentive has an associated negative impact on the business.

If you offer a bonus for a short-term behavior or goal and offer nothing to balance with the long-term impact.

Your incentive may actually damage your business in the long term. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 1 Comment

What To Do When A Customer Requests MTBF

You have carefully crafted a detailed reliability goal including function, environment, probability, and duration, plus apportioned it to critical supplied subsystems and components. Your vendor decides to use MTBF instead.
What can you do? What should you do?

ᐅ Play Episode

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Getting Started in Reliability Engineering

Initially, the CRE Prep blog aimed at providing refresher material for those preparing for the ASQ CRE exam.

In discussions with readers, it has become clear to me that many new to reliability engineering have found the series of articles useful.

That is should not be surprising since many of the tutorials are introductory and practical.

The problem those new to the field have is related with where to start.

There is a lot of information related to reliability engineering.

From defining reliability to working with teams to Weibull analysis, there is a lot to know. [Read more…]

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Are Prototypes Useful for Reliability Estimates

Prototypes are precious items. A vendor sample or beta version of factory parts may provide necessary insights.

They are not real though.

The prototypes and samples we hold, admire, examine and test are just a representation of the final product or system.

It is extremely rare we will learn exactly what we need to know with these few items. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 6 Comments

Exam Taking Insights and a Request

Recently one of the CRE Preparation course students sat for the ASQ CRE exam at one of the Prometrics testing centers.

She passed – which is great, and she knew this as she received grading immediately after finishing the exam.

That is a new and nice feature. What we do not know if what happens if you do not pass.

Do you get feedback in a meaningful manner?

Here are a few other notes on the exam experience Raye reported. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 2 Comments

The Role of Legends in Your Reliability Program

One of my favorite things to do when visiting a new company, it at lunch or during a break, ask:

“Any major disasters that impacted reliability?”

Typically, there are three stories that start with, “Remember the… “, or, “One time…”

It seems every organization has legendary stories in the organizational memory. [Read more…]

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Customer Reliability Expectations Change

Image that. Customers say one thing and expect something else.

A customer may provide a detailed and complete reliability specification, then, 6 months into using the product complain it is not reliable enough. [Read more…]

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When is DOE Useful?

On page 6 of Statistics for Experimenters, Box, and Hunter suggest a scientist could conduct an investigation without statistics.

Whereas, a statistician could not do so without scientific knowledge.

The text’s discussion quickly expands on the benefits to a scientist when they do employ statistical thinking and tools.

Design of Experiments, DOE, is a set of statistical tools that allow an investigator to efficiently examine multiple factors and their associated influence on results.

DOE allows us to be better investigators. [Read more…]