Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
A listing in reverse chronological order of articles by:
Leadership is a difficult term to clearly define. A team leader may have poor or wonderful leadership skills. A product may lead in a market with a broad feature offering, yet not hold a recognized leadership position.
As a reliability engineer, you will find many opportunities to lead. Your ability to provide vision, direction, guidance, and support for a team enables you to affect change and accomplish goals. [Read more…]
The bane of our existence is one thing, generating enough data to demonstrate statistical confidence. Every reliability engineer, every project manager, every Director and VP all have the same moment of panic in a new product development program. In synchronicity they put their head in their hand. It’s when the required number of test units and calendar time to demonstrate a required confidence in the reliability goal is calculated. It’s usually about ten times more units than can be acquired and about two times longer than the entire product development program timeline.
I have been working with clients recently who are keen users of FMEA. Getting engineers to contribute potential failures and their causes is not a problem with these clients, but ensuring that actions are correctly identified and followed up is not so easy. So, what goes wrong? What differentiates a good FMEA from a great FMEA? [Read more…]
I was teaching a class on Reliability 101 a few years ago and it turned out to be one of those great classes where debate and discussion would just pop up all over the place. I frequently start my classes with “If I end up being the only one speaking today I am going to take that as an indication of complete failure in having engaged you in this material.” So I was loving that this group were starting to debate each other on the material we were covering. I wasn’t even in some of the conversations. This rich environment is where I just spurted out one of my more memorable reliability quotes. [Read more…]
Not all of us are fortunate enough to receive great feedback. We all do receive feedback, and some receive very little actionable feedback.
If you offer proposals, give presentations, make requests, or even just ask for a favor, you will receive some form of response. It often is just an answer to the call to action, and nothing more.
At some point, you may be ‘pulled aside’ so someone can provide you feedback on your behavior, your delivery, your ability or skill. It is this type of feedback that is essential to your improvement. [Read more…]
We, as developers, create designs that we call “our own.” Rarely are the materials for our in-house manufacturing process raw steel, rubber, and glass, like Henry Ford had feed into the Ford factory in 1930. Our manufacturing process receives a mix of materials and fully functional sub assemblies from other technology companies. It’s unlikely the PCB electronic components, bearings, motors, gears, drivetrains, sensors, power supplies, harnesses are ours. Why would you design any of these with so many options available made by specialists? This results in us having little input or control in the development and demonstrated reliability of our entire product. [Read more…]
The Pioneers rarely reap the rewards of new discoveries. It’s usually the settlers that really profit from the new expansion. Many companies, especially small ones striving to get into a market, bet on a big technology breakthrough to get their foot in the door. As consumers, we do eventually become aware of “the others” once the market for that technology is in motion. “The others” were quietly watching and diligently developing the improved version based on the experiences of the pioneer’s first take. [Read more…]
The process to design and deliver a reliable product involves identifying risks. Taking action to understand or mitigate those risks involves much of the day to day work of reliability engineering.
Taking action to set expectations and improve decisions involves change. Change of understanding, change of specifications, change of expectations, change of designs, processes, and results.
It is the changes, big and small, that occur that achieve the desired results for the customer and organization.
You also know that not every suggestion is greeted warmly. Not every proposal is funded. Not every recommendation is accepted. [Read more…]
The Vasa is a Swedish ship that was constructed between 1626 and 1628. It is a great story of an engineering disaster, well that’s how it is labeled. It doesn’t take too much investigation to see it is really a leadership disaster.
I saw the Vasa in beautifully restored condition at it’s museum in Stockholm Sweden. It was retrieved from the ocean floor in 1961. Amazingly after almost 300 years it was intact and well preserved in the freezing waters off Sweden. This is it’s story… and warning! [Read more…]
We facilitate. As reliability professionals, we often lead teams to identify risk. We help cross-functional teams find and implement solutions. We bring people together and ease their ability to communicate clearly with each other.
Whether a leader or participant we have a role to achieve the desired goals. Our ability to facilitate enables us to work with others to get things done. Understanding how to facilitate well permits us to add value when leading or participating on a team. [Read more…]
The importance of reliability education in a product development program cannot be understated. A design initiative with mechanical content can be created solely by the mechanical team, same for electrical, and software. These other disciplines will create a better product if they collaborate from the start, but this is not necessary. A successful product can still be created if they intersect later. Reliability doesn’t have this flexibility. Reliability tools don’t have a deliverable like a function or a feature. They are an assist for the function or feature during the process of creation. As an assist discipline, it only works if implemented while the other processes are in motion. Attempting to add it after the design has been completed requires a deconstruction of the previous work if improvements are needed. [Read more…]
I just returned from the IEEE ASQ Accelerated Stress Test and Reliability Conference, held this year in Austin, Texas. It’s always been a great conference. There is such a good comradery and sharing of knowledge when a large group comes together on such a specific topic. I meet a lot of great people from many different industries, all with great experience to share. [Read more…]
Confidence is used in reliability to give a probabilistic value to the likelihood that a taken measurement will represent a full population. It is determined by measuring a sample size and then using a selected statistical distribution table to translate to a likelihood. Emotional confidence is how one feels about making a decision based on known information at a specific point in time. Similar but different. But it is important to connect them. This is why. [Read more…]
Reliability engineering, analysis, management, testing… − Where do I get the skills and training to be really effective? University or College? In-house? Conferences? Webinars? Software or Equipment Suppliers? Journals? A colleague? − Do I need a Certification? − Do I need an integrated program, or only specific stand-alone techniques?
Everyone has to start somewhere. And if we are going to be smart about it, we should examine our needs and make a plan… [Read more…]
I like the occasional good catchphrase. I typically tend to speak in analogies and anecdotes and many of my customers and colleagues have suggested documenting them. So on occasion, I will write them in my notebook. Here are a few. [Read more…]