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Carl and Fred discuss the subject of safety. Specifically whether an item or device can be considered safe or not safe (binary), or whether there are degrees of safety (variable).
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Chris and Fred discuss the difference between ‘making’ and ‘checking’ reliability. And there is a difference. This podcast follows on from Chris’s article about a US Department of Defense (DoD) quick reference guide on a ‘Reliability and Maintainability Engineering Body of Knowledge.’ The problem with this document was it was all about ‘checking’ reliability – and not enough ‘making’ reliability.
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Kirk and Fred discussing how we can insure we receive outsourced parts meet our requirements when we may not know what variances in specifications will affect your particular system.
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Kirk and Fred discussing a recent failure of an electric range/oven and the troubleshooting, FA and repair. See the show notes to see photos and details of the failure analysis.
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Chris and Fred discuss this thing called ‘Wright’s Law’ which is a really fascinating way of describing how things improve as we create more of them. And why is this relevant for reliability engineering? Does ‘reliability growth’ ring a bell?
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Chris and Fred discuss how important maintenance culture is – especially when it comes to safety-critical systems. Like ‘cable cars’ used to transport people up ski slopes. But unfortunately (like the recent accident that occurred in Italy that resulted in 14 deaths) toxic maintenance culture can lead to disastrous consequences. And this tends to happen across the world on a regular basis. Why does this happen?
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Chris and Fred discuss what ‘distribution parameters’ mean when it comes to random processes. Specifically failure random processes. This is an interesting podcast in response to a question from one of our listeners – which are podcasts we love!
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Carl and Fred discussing the topic of giving and receiving feedback, and how it supports professional development.
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Abstract
Carl and Fred discussing a listener summitted question: When one’s job is focused on a single area of reliability, how does one keep up with advancements ones own area, as well as the entire field of reliability engineering? [Read more…]
Chris and Fred discuss the different words we often use (and misuse) in reliability engineering. ‘Reliability’ has been used for hundreds of years to describe different concepts of ruggedness, robustness, strength, timeliness, trustworthiness and so on. But – reliability has a specific definition within reliability engineering. There are plenty of other examples of how words we use in reliability engineering can have multiple meanings – even when we think they don’t!
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Chris and Fred discuss accelerated testing – and how we come up with acceleration factors. Accelerated testing is great! It allows us to compress an entire lifecycle into a short test duration for us to quickly understand the reliability characteristics of our system … ONLY if we know what we are doing. Keen to learn more?
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Carl and Fred discussing the essence of team leadership. Reliability engineers need to add effective team leadership to their core set of skills.
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Carl and Fred discussing what it means to be a leader, and how the principles of leadership go beyond the traditional roles of management.
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Chris and Fred discuss what it means to focus on ‘effort’ instead of ‘outcomes.’ We often think we focus on outcomes only … but how many people ‘get by’ simply by being ‘seen’ around the office, looking busy when there, and otherwise being friendly to everyone? They always volunteer to be part of a team, do some of the ‘less glamorous’ tasks, and otherwise be ‘part of something.’ But is this person actually valuable? (… harsh as the question sounds).
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Chris and Fred discussing the 3 perspectives of Fault Tree Analysis or FTA. What … there are 3 perspectives? … what are perspectives when it comes to FTA?
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