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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 Leave a Comment

The Culture of Design for Reliability

The Culture of Design for Reliability

The way we think and act concerning creating a reliable product or system defines the reliability culture of an origination. I trust your organization doesn’t complete the design then ask the reliability folks to ‘add the reliability element’ or ‘test to prove it’s reliable enough’.

Another ineffective approach is to perform many reliability-related tasks, like a design FMEA, HALT, ALT, derating, margin and environmental testing, life testing, demonstration testing, etc More is not better. If the focus is just doing the list of tasks, with little information acted upon, then this approach is little more than a waste of resources.

So, what is it that makes a wonderful design for reliability program? It’s not expecting the reliability team to do it on their own, nor is it checking off a long list of tasks. It is the focus across the organization, inside and outside the design and development team, that each decision made has an impact on reliability performance. As such, the work of the DfR program is to enable each decision to be well informed concerning the potential impact to reliability involved with the pending decision. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics, on Product Reliability

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

How One Person Can Change the Reliability Culture

How One Person Can Change the Reliability Culture

Nicholas W. Eyrich, Robert E. Quinn, and David P. Fessell published in the Harvard Business Review an article titled “How One Person Can Change the Conscience of an Organization”, dated December 27, 2019. In the article, they discuss how corporate transformations, while assumed to occur from the top-down, actually it is the middle managers and first-line supervisor that can make significant change happen.

They look at what it takes for one person to make a significant change within an organization. As reliability or quality professionals, we often have the opportunity to spot needed changes. It is then up to us to tackle those challenges to make the change happen. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics, on Product Reliability

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Building a Basic Box Plot

Building a Basic Box Plot

One of the first things to do when faced with a set of numbers is to plot them. A histogram is often the first choice, maybe a dot plot. Up your data plotting skills and let your data provide a bit more information by using a box plot. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, CRE Preparation Notes, Probability and Statistics for Reliability

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Best Practice for Dealing with Field Failures

Best Practice for Dealing with Field Failures

A common practice I’ve seen in organizations is to deal with field failures when they occur. This may occur when the mistaken assumption that no failure will occur due to ‘such an excellent design.”

Ben Franklin may not have been thinking about future product failures, yet his quote:

By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail.

implies we need to prepare ourselves and our organization to deal with field failures. Having clear processes to deal with field failures is a best practice. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics, on Product Reliability

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Introduction to the Delphi Method

Introduction to the Delphi Method

As reliability professionals, we are in the business of estimating or forecasting the reliability performance of our product, equipment, or system. While we use a range of tools to analytically make these estimates, sometimes we do not have sufficient data or information.

One method is to ask another person that has knowledge of the particular technology, use conditions, or whatever is hampering our work. If you ask two people you most like will get two different answers. If you ask 10, 10 different answers.

One way to work with a group of subject matter experts is to conduct a structured communication technique called the Delphi Method. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, CRE Preparation Notes, Data Collection and Use

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Improving Reliability with Good Judgment

Improving Reliability with Good Judgment

At an early concept meeting discussing the technical strategy for the new product, the engineering teams were at an impasse. The decision matrix balanced out with three distinct options. Product reliability differed slightly with each option yet presented risks just as the considerations of cost, complexity, feature set, and time to market.

The project manager, the leader of the development program, asked a few questions, asked for input from the director of engineering, and selected a path forward.

The team accepted the decision. The project went well. Yet, I’ve often wondered how did she know which option to select. I also learned to trust her judgment on difficult decisions. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics, on Product Reliability

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

What-if Analysis

What-if Analysis

What if you knew all the possible outcomes for your product’s reliability performance due to component variations, for example? What if you knew the future with enough certainty to make a difference?

Building on brainstorming, what-if analysis involved using models or prototypes that allow you to change something and see how it alters the output or performance. What if we change this support bracket from iron to aluminum? What if we swap out this 100 ohm resistor for a 200 ohm one?

As a curious engineer you could spend many, many hours conducting what-if based experiments, so there is a bit more to this idea then just a random walk of changes. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, CRE Preparation Notes, Reliability in Design and Development

by Fred Schenkelberg 1 Comment

Is Making Assumptions Similar to Making Mistakes

Is Making Assumptions Similar to Making Mistakes

Over the past week, I received a couple of interesting questions. One concerned assuming a Weibull beta value for an accelerated life test plan. The second involved assuming expected life models for elements within a reliability block diagram.

In both cases, we faced incomplete data and uncertainties, yet felt the need to assume some values in order for the math to work out. We do make assumptions in order to solve problems. We also can make mistakes that lead to unwanted consequences. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics, on Product Reliability

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Lessons Learned via Golden Nuggets

Lessons Learned via Golden Nuggets

One of the enjoyable parts of reliability engineering work is the consistent need to learn. We learn how new materials, designs, applications, and systems work, and fail. Sometimes we learn through proactive characterization studies, sometimes via unwanted field failures.

Failures will occur, it is what we learn from them that matters. The ability to gather and remember the lessons learned is a common and ongoing need for every organization. We are not very good at it, in general. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics, on Product Reliability

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Creating a Dot Plot

Creating a Dot Plot

Graphs contain information and often tell a story. Our interpretation of the graphic can be aided or hindered by the design or style of the plot. Cleveland and McGill (1984) studied graphical perception and found the use of dot plots to aid viewers to understand the data’s message clearly.

The nature of a dot plot is like a bar chart, yet without the bars. Less ink, just a dot to indicate count or position along an axis permits conveying information simply. Due to its simplicity, it also permits adding additional information useful for comparisons or spotting trends, and more. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, CRE Preparation Notes, Probability and Statistics for Reliability

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Dealing with Reliability Related Uncertainty

Dealing with Reliability Related Uncertainty

Uncertainty is another word for risk. Reliability uncertainty or risk is neither good nor bad, it just a bit unknown. Until we know the outcome, the eventual reliability performance, we will not know the impact.

So, how do we deal with reliability uncertainty? Will our product or system work as expected over time, or will it fail? Let’s examine a few of the common approaches in use and when and why the approach is effective. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics, on Product Reliability

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Building and Using Pareto Charts

Building and Using Pareto Charts

You may have heard of the 80/20 rule. The idea is that 80% of the wealth is held by 20% of the population. As an Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto made this observation that became generalized as the

Pareto Principle: 80% of outcomes are due to 20% of causes

For field returns, for example, we may surmise that 80% of the failures are due to 20% of the components, for example. This principle helps us to focus our work to reduce field failures by address the vital few causes that lead to the most, or most expensive, failures. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, CRE Preparation Notes, Data Collection and Use, Probability and Statistics for Reliability

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

A Two-Step Approach to Get Better at What You Do

A Two-Step Approach to Get Better at What You Do

How is it that some people continue to get better at managing meetings, designing complex test plans, making presentations, or solving problems? How in general do people improve their performance over time at something? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics, on Product Reliability

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Acceleration Factors with Examples

Acceleration Factors with Examples

Acceleration Factors with Examples

podcast episode with speaker Fred Schenkelberg

When conducting an accelerated life test it is essential to carefully consider the acceleration factor (AF). Like warp drives shortening distance, accelerated life tests (ALT) attempt to shorten time. Think warp factor and acceleration factor as being similar, well sort of. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 1 Comment

Beware of the Type III Error

Beware of the Type III Error

There is a type of error when conducting statistical testing that is to work very hard to correctly answer the wrong question. This error occurs during the formation of the experiment.

Despite creating a perfect null and alternative hypothesis, sometimes we are investigating the wrong question. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, CRE Preparation Notes, Probability and Statistics for Reliability

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