The Hunt for Reliability Training

Abstract

Chris and Fred discuss how you go about ‘hunting’ reliability training. And we do mean ‘hunt.’

Key Points

Join Chris and Fred as they discuss how you go about getting good training for your organization. You can’t simply go with the first result that pops up in a Google search. And you also can’t go with the same ‘guy’ you have always gone with if you don’t know why. So where do you start?

What are you trying to achieve? Why are you doing it? Before you go looking for training, work out what problem you are trying to solve. If you don’t know the problem you need to solve, then you don’t know what ‘success’ looks like. If you don’t know what ‘success’ looks like, then you don’t know if a particular training course is going to help. It could be that you need to train people to use your Highly Accelerated Life Testing (HALT) chamber. It could be that you want to start a reliability conversation in the organization, and you need people to be more generally aware of reliability topics. Understand what you want and then go and get it.
It is OK to get taught more than you need to know. But not too much. One of the many complaints about high school and university courses is that they teach you mathematics and other stuff that you ‘never’ use in the real world. This can be technically true, but practically false. Depending on where you are now, you might never use the differential calculus you studied in the 10th – 12th grades. But … this learning how to do calculus did exercise your brain. It made you smarter. It made you better. But there is obviously a point where endless statistics is not useful for drafting a reliability plan.
Is training the right path anyway? Let’s say that your organization wants to roll out a new program. A new initiative. A new way of doing things. Is bringing in outside training experts the best way of making this happen? Or would it perhaps be the leadership group making the case, explaining why the new ‘thing’ is important, and how you will be valued as part of it? Training might be an important part of the second option … but training should never be the simple answer to a more encompassing problem. Perhaps you could start with reading a book. Or Googling. What are you trying to achieve?
‘Virtual’ versus ‘in-person?’ It wasn’t that long ago that ‘virtual’ or ‘online’ training was a poor cousin to ‘in-person’ training. That has since changed. Some virtual training allows all sorts of useful animations and visual aids … for teachers willing to go the extra mile. So while ‘in-person’ training certainly has its own pros and cons, it sometimes can’t provide all the advantages of ‘virtual’ or ‘online’ training. What will work for you?

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.