Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics

Short essays and thoughts (musings) on reliability and maintenance engineering topics.

Let me know your reaction and thought, plus any questions.

ISSN 2329-0080

How Do You Stay Current?

When I first started working in a factory as a shift supervisor, it seemed there was some type of formal training nearly every month. And we were expected to attend a conference once a year. Little did I know that was a great time to start working in industry. We enjoyed a lot of great training.

Later in my career and as the economy changed budgets for training slowly declined. Travel budgets also slipped away. I don’t have hard numbers, yet I suspect there is less company-sponsored professional development than 20 years ago.

As an engineering working in the reliability field, how do you keep up and learn what you need to know to accomplish your work? [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Murphy’s Law and Reliability

It always seems there are more red lights when I’m running late.

This comment and others similar to it caught my attention lately. Is it just Murphy’s Law or something else?

There is an element of luck or chance in many events during our daily lives. The same is true when producing products and the resulting reliability. A lot has to go right for the product to work for the customer.

When something isn’t going as expected, we have a comparison that gains attention. If the lights are red more often, in theory, when I’m running late, maybe the lights are not turning red more often, it’s just that we notice.

For product development, it’s noticing the items that are going well and failing that matter. As reliability professionals, we need to continue to practice being aware of what is expected and what actually happens. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

The Learning and Teaching Route to Success

Reliability engineers learn basic tools and techniques most often from others with that knowledge. During our careers, we also continue to learn and often find ourselves teaching. Even when mentoring we find ourselves learning. Being a deliberate and active student and teacher is a great way to remain inquisitive and helpful.

Learning and teaching route to success

Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune. [1]

Learning never stops. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 1 Comment

Successful Reliability Engineers Add Value

Value is:

the regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth,
or usefulness of something. [1]

As a reliability engineer, we work across the organization to bring a reliable product to market. The value of meeting the customer’s reliability expectations results in customer satisfactions, increased sales, and in some cases premium pricing.

We want a reliable product.

[Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Networked and Positive as a Reliability Engineer

Many elements help make a reliability engineer successful.Two such elements are knowing the right people to get the job done and generally being a positive and enjoyable person to be around.

[Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 1 Comment

Talent and Professionalism as a Reliability Engineer

My dictionary says that talented is “having a natural aptitude or skill for something.”

We learn reliability engineering and those who understand the range of tools and techniques useful for a given situation would be considered talented.

Everything is not solved by running a highly accelerated life test (HALT) or only conducting detailed failure analysis. Knowing when and why to apply a particular tool and using the tool effectively (i.e., when to use a Weibull distribution to model lifetime data and how to use the information to make decisions) are critical. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Success as a Reliability Engineer

Whether by design or by accident some of us become reliability engineers. Making a career in reliability engineering relies on your ability to make a difference and to add value. Being successful as a reliability engineer, while creating reliable products, permits continuation and growth as a reliability professional.

[Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Why Wait for Field Returns?

In an ideal world, our products and equipment will just work. They would not fail and would not require warranty claims, product returns, or repair.

Unfortunately, we make design mistakes, assembly errors, incur damage, or simply fail. The desired balance for most businesses is the cost of returns will not outweigh the profit of sales.

[Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 2 Comments

How to Spot Reliability-Minded Coworkers

Being the reliability engineer on a project doesn’t have to be a lonely assignment.

Nearly everyone on the team shares the same goal. That of creating a reliable product or maintaining equipment availability.

Other may be electrical or mechanical engineers, technicians, procurement or some other part of the organization, yet they all have something to contribute to improving reliability.

Sometimes you have to find the reliability-minded individuals – to assist when gathering information – to identify potential weaknesses – to provide support for a reliability task – to encourage others to fully consider reliability with each decision [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Creating Reliability Champions

How do you find, encourage and develop reliability professionals across your organization? We all face the challenge of creating a culture of reliability within an organization at some point in our careers.

Do so alone is nearly impossible.

You need support. You need more hands and minds that can spot reliability opportunities. You need to be in dozens of conversations per hour across the organization.

This is difficult for one person to accomplish.

[Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

14 Ways to Acquire Reliability Engineering Knowledge

Maria Popova recently wrote about the work of James T. Mangan and his book You Can Do Anything!, published in 1936. In particular she focused on one section titled 14 Ways to Acquire Knowledge

The article is about learning anything, which had me thinking about how to learn reliability engineering. So, without apology let’s explore 14 ways to learn about reliability engineering. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Basics of Reliability Engineering

One of best features about working in reliability engineering is everything fails, eventually. This fact provides a bit of career stability.

Another aspect I enjoy is the concepts and approaches that create the foundation for reliability engineering knowledge do not change very much over time. The basics of reliability engineering are the same as when the earliest engineers began design structures and products.

[Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

3 Ideas to Overcome Organizational Inertia

It seems the forces of nature are working against our ideas.

I recall being frustrated as a child playing in the sandbox. I wanted to create a ramp of sand to race my cars down. No matter how much I pushed and patted the dry sand succumbed to some unseen force and did not hold the desired shape.

In business, we sometimes experience the same frustration. It’s not gravity.

Instead, we are facing organizational inertia.

[Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 2 Comments

11 Ways to Find Reliability Value

Most agree that improving products or process reliability is a good thing. It’s good for customers, factories, and our business.

And, sometimes it’s difficult to answer the question,

What is the value of that reliability activity?

Years ago my boss asked me what value I provided the organization. Working as a reliability professional, I thought that my value was obvious. He asked me to show the value.

It was harder than I thought.

[Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Finding Value in FMEA

Failure modes and effect analysis (FMEA) is a tool that works to prevent process and product problems before they occur.

I like to define FMEA’s as an organized brainstorm. The process examines a product or process and asks what could go wrong. Then the team systematically determines and rank orders for each failure mode:
– the severity of the problem when it occurs
– the probability of the problem occurring
– the ability to detect the problem before it occurs

Good design engineers think about how the design could fail and improve the design. FMEA provides a structured team approach to further improve the design.

[Read more…]