Fast vs Thorough

Abstract

Carl and Fred discussing the need to be fast in smaller or startup companies. Reliability engineering can adapt to a fast culture and support lean product development, without compromising essential tasks.

Key Points

Join Carl and Fred as they discuss the product development process in small companies, balancing the need to be lean and fast with the necessity of being thorough and not miss anything important.

Topics include:

What is the culture at startup companies?
Quality and reliability can move fast, and still be thorough.
Companies (both large and small) need to be fast-to-market, meet budget constraints and achieve high reliability.
The difference with small companies is the path to meet the objectives may not be the same.
It is critical to understand the essence of reliability methods and work with the smaller teams to achieve the goals.
What does it take to be thorough and fast at the same time?
- Develop a sense for what is important, compared to what is trivial or not important.
- Don’t ignore any anomalies, don’t ignore failures.
- Advocate for and speak up about reliability issues.
- Understand the mechanisms of failure and support decisions that support reliability in design.
- FMEA can be fast, but it must be supported by the right team for higher-risk areas.
- Develop the value of willingness to take a stand, when needed.
- Have open and frank discussions, and be willing to challenge people.
Show Notes has link to article on why FMEAs need to be team based.
There is always time to do FMEA on critical areas.
Having an “FMEA point of view”
Use “Preliminary Risk Assessment” to determine which vital few areas need to be addressed with FMEA.

Enjoy an episode of Speaking of Reliability. Where you can join friends as they discuss reliability topics. Join us as we discuss topics ranging from design for reliability techniques to field data analysis approaches.