on Product Reliability

The Plan: Saturday and Sunday was skiing in Vermont with the family,  back Sunday night, everyone off to school Monday morning, then to the airport to get to Miami, Tuesday and Wed meetings down there, then fly out Wed night so I’m back to teach classes Thur and Fri here in Boston.  Easy Peesie!

Actual: Finish ski trip feel a little “strange” on flight down to Miami, slight chills.  Tuesday do meetings just barely, Tuesday night it hits like a freight train, The Flu, or Malaria, Aliens. On Wednesday the freight train had fully passed over me so it stopped and spent Wed backing up over me again. Thursday it went forward again over a pile of human jello. I’m not flying out for the clases on Thur and Fri, or anytime soon for that matter. Just getting home is my mission for the week.

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Modular subsystems in a wheelhouse technology may or may not be a staple in your industry.  There are some industries where they are not a standard practice and there are industries where without them, you can’t be a competitor.  Of course there is everything in-between.

First let’s define what a modular subsystem is for this discussion.  A modular subsystem is an assembly that is designed to be integratable into multiple products.  For the automotive industry this could be a transmission.  Each car model a manufacturer makes does not have a unique transmission design.  There may be six transmission types that cover 20 car models.

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I just came back from one of the best RAMS conferences I have attended (In my over 10 years of attending).  I was fortunate enough to present a paper on “Balancing Reliability Goals in the Product Development Process”.  The questions I received were great!  The higher level management of how reliability integrates into product programs is the next big advancement for our discipline.

-Adam

https://youtu.be/YPJBxwIJAi4

An executive asked me how to make a “perfectly reliable product.”

I told him that program would look a lot like an embarrassing market failure that could put a company out of business.

This was not the response he was expecting.  I chose to elaborate before he just walked away.

The investment of time, dollars, and man power to create a “perfectly” reliable product would force such a compromise on all other aspects of the product and program that any type of market success would almost be impossible.  I can only think of two types of products that could benefit from an approach of creating perfect reliability. The two I am thinking of are the Mars Rover ‘Curiosity” and a nuclear power plant. The desire for “perfect reliability” would be driven by either an avoidance of massive loss of life (not just a few lives) or loss of billions of dollars by a single failure mode.

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The Titanic had two sister ships, the Britannic and the Olympic. There was a woman called Violet Jessop, a nurse and a cruise liner stewardess that worked on all three. (That’s her, to the right->)

1. The Olympic crashed into a warship whilst leaving harbor but was able to make it back.
2. She was on the Titanic as it sank and is referenced in the Titanic film, a stewardess that was told to set an example to the non english speaking passengers as the ship sank. She looked after a baby on lifeboat 16 until being rescued by the Carpathia the next day.
3. It’s not known what exactly caused the sinking of the Britannic but the lifeboats hit the water too early. As the ship sank, the rear listed up and a number of the lifeboats were sucked into the propellers. Violet had to jump out of the lifeboat she was in and sustained a serious head injury, but survived.

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Toyota just issued a recall of all 1993 Toyota Camrys. Tokyo-  “It’s simply time for drivers to move on.” Then added “We understand that the 1993 Camry was tremendously dependable, but, honestly, there’s just no excuse for driving a 24-year-old car at this point. You could have updated features like bluetooth and a backup camera” said Toyota spokesman Haruki Kinoshita. While Toyota is reportedly confining its recall to the 1993 Camry, it also issued a warning to owners of 1994 to 1998 models alerting them to the fact that they were really starting to push it.
I can’t take full credit for that joke.  But like most satire it is inspired by a reality. I actually just walked by this car in a parking lot a few hours ago. [Read more…]

The term “Physics of Failure” is used when referring to the underlying mechanism that has driven a failure mode.  I have issue with the words “Physics” in this phrase as a “catch all.”  This implies we are only working with physical or kinematic interactions when studying product wear-out. Wear-out failures are rooted in chemistry as well.  Most electronic failures are chemistry based.   If a failure can be tracked back to a material property change, dielectrics, brittleness, transformation (oxidation), strength loss based on property change without fatigue, we have a chemistry problem. Mechanical physics does not play a part in understanding the input and response relationship or assist with creating an accelerated life model in these cases.

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It can be hard as a reliability engineer to influence the greater organization.  Reliability engineers have that awkward dynamic of not just executing the tools they are expert in but directing others to incorporate them into their own process.  If the perception is that reliability engineers only instruct others what to do, like a coach, then the perception may be that “they don’t have skin in the game”. If they take complete ownership of reliability activities the effectiveness of any tools influence on the product greatly diminishes. “DfR principle #1, You can’t “Design for Reliability” if the design team isn’t using reliability tools in the design process.

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I didn’t create this image but I thought it was an interesting idea. A consumer has captured  a niche group of manufactures that are basing their brand on “service for life.”  The forever outfit.

I saw this the same day that Tesla came out with their semi truck announcement.  A few things that caught my attention from that announcement was how they emphasized reliability and low maintenance in their product profile.  “The brake pads will last forever” and “The drivetrain has a 1 million mile warranty.”

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A common tool for comparing if two populations are the same is the “student t-test.”  This is often used in reliability, and science, if we want to investigate if a factor has caused a change in a respnse.

A population was assembled in location “A”.  Another population was assembled in location “B”.  Population “A” has an average defect rate of 4%.  Population “B” has an average defect rate of 5.5%. Does the location of assembly affect defect rate?  That’s just a big argument unless we can project the statistical likelihood that what we have measured is not just an overlap of noise. [Read more…]