Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
The Apex Ridge article series covers a diverse set of topics that relate to many of our reader’s work, interests, and experiences. The articles are inspired by industry experiences with the intent of sharing, educating and assisting you with your career challenges and growth. The content is targeted for a diverse audience with backgrounds even extending beyond engineering (Hmm talking to you project and business managers). My hope is that these topics inspire you to have discussions with your colleagues or right in the comments of the series. I look forward to seeing you on-line soon.
Many of our customers (internal/external) trust us when we say that a Weibull analysis is the best approach to understanding what the data set is telling us. We then take their data set, do something mysterious where no one can see us, and then present these accurate predictions as to what is going to happen with a given population of the product at some future date. [Read more…]
Often when we request an analysis from an engineer we run with the results and don’t ask a lot of questions about the analysis itself. Having done a lot of analysis I am familiar with all the assumptions and estimations that go into making a calculation work. But that means that the results of the analysis are only relevant to those assumptions and estimations. The analyst may have to make the following “calls” without additional input or only a small fact-finding mission. [Read more…]
My career path in systems engineering. I don’t mean my professional engineering career exactly. My systems engineering portfolio I would say started at about the age of nine if I had to pick a point in time. At nine I made a small hydro-electric power plant in the stream behind my house so I could have light in the woods. I could have taken a purely electrical approach, battery, wires, bulb, or a chemistry approach, matches, wood, oxygen, or a mechanical approach (actually how do you make light mechanically? Sparks??) anyway… But I took a systems approach. [Read more…]
I don’t know if you recall a post from my blog, “HALT Testing is Not Always In a Chamber”, that discussed what I consider to be the first documented HALT test. Well I just found a video of the design solution in action and it is super cool. I discussed how during 
the development of the F1 rocket motor, for the Apollo space program, they solved a design issue with a HALT technique, although they didn’t call it HALT at the time. The issue they were attempting to solve was the thrust nozzles fracturing due to oscillating vibration. [Read more…]
This is the third session from the Annual Apex Ridge Reliability Seminar held in Boston.
In this session, I discuss the methodology of HALT and how to connect it with program tools and objectives.
The philosophy of HALT is often misunderstood simply due to its name and acronym, “Highly Accelerated Life Testing” (HALT).
It is not an accelerated life test, it’s really not even a test. HALT is a process of increasing stress on a design to induce failures for the purpose of learning about the design and improving its robustness.
It’s a discovery process. [Read more…]
This is the second session from the Annual Apex Ridge Reliability Seminar held in Boston.
The session focus was how to best use specialized testing technique outputs as effective program inputs. There are simple steps for hooking the information from the test data into the correct program management decision points.
Very often opportunities are missed in programs by aligning testing outputs with incorrect program phases. [Read more…]
We just held the Annual Apex Ridge/NEHALT seminar, sponsored by Qualmark. We had a full house again which was great. This year’s seminar was in three sections.
The first section discussed the methodology for balancing reliability with other product goals during a development program.
The second session was on Reliability testing tools and how to use their outputs to steer program decisions and design improvement. The third session was on specialized HALT testing techniques. [Read more…]
DFMEA’s definitely have a bad reputation as exercises that consume an enormous amount of time and unfortunately yield little value to the program.
And can be miserable to experience.
A quote from a customer “We aren’t going to do any more DFMEA’s because we feel a bit traumatized by the last round.”
I have also seen DFMEA’s be a cornerstone to a design program using its resources with surgical precision to improve the product.
I started to think about the differences between the ineffective and effective DFMEA’s. Here are some of the steps that I believe make the “good ones” GOOD. [Read more…]
This is the wheel of the Curiosity Rover after millions of rotations on Mars.
This is how I feel after I ask customers about legacy product performance. [Read more…]
If you look around you day to day you can see a lot of examples of reliability testing.
When you are at the hardware store and looking at new power tools, notice which have broken switches, triggers, handles. Many of us often just think it’s a defective one. But it’s not. It’s the weakest model of the bunch.
If all the models were put on display at similar times they have all been going through life cycle testing. Every person that walks by picks it up and pulls the trigger, flips the switches bangs it around a bit.
It’s getting its life cycle testing done right in front of you. The one with the broken features is the model with the shortest life. [Read more…]
A term that I use when describing product goals that are tangible and drive program decisions is “Product Asset.”
A Product Asset is “a fundamental attribute of a product that can be characterized as a quantitative measurable goal.”
The five Product Assets that I commonly select are the following:
Two of the most common acronyms used regarding manufacturing screening processes are ESS and HASS.
ESS stands for “Environmental Stress Screening” and HASS stands for “Highly Accelerated Stress Screening.” [Read more…]
It’s no longer an option to be the strong household name brand in an industry.
You have to expand your technology capabilities to stay in the market.
There are product lines that have had a consistent core technology for long periods of time.
Companies that are leaders in these are “the experts” and they hold maximum market share because the customers know what brand to buy if they want the best.
But if there is a sudden change in the technology, then that “bulletproof” brand name can be tarnished in one product cycle.
What if the core technology suddenly changes to include new electronics or software controls or something we would never have imagined.
The competitors are about to gain market share based on feature add, sometimes “jumped into the future” feature add; The iPad, Tesla electric vehicles, Tesla assisted autonomous driving, smartphone, Solid State memory, automotive electronic fuel injection, jet engines, desktop printer – this is a “Side Swipe”. [Read more…]
Many companies achieve great success based on their ability to create, invent, and develop a technology.
If this is the dominant focus of their product development programs they will maintain a high market share by continuing to be cutting edge.
These industries and technologies are highly competitive with respect to new features and functionality for a period of time, but the growth of any specific technology slows as it matures.
When this occurs, customers begin to put more weight on cost point and reliability when deciding which model or brand to purchase.
It is a very conscious decision to have reliability be a part of your products brand.
What conversations with marketing and the leadership have occurred for your next product development program?
Was there a conscious decision to place your product in a certain range of reliability?
Too many times it’s a discussion that happens as the product is reaching it’s Beta stage of development, “Let’s measure its reliability and see where it’s at and if we need to improve it”.
You can measure reliability that late in the game but you have little opportunity to change it. So what if it is far lower than the product target market expects?
What if it is far overbuilt and millions of dollars of cost savings were missed in this first generation of the design?
It happens this way more than not. [Read more…]