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by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Adjusting to Customer Expectations Changing

Adjusting to Customer Expectations Changing

Customers Expectations Tend Toward Better Reliability Over Time

Reliability goals or objectives are just a starting point.

You goals represent your target at one point in time.

At best they represent what your customers expect for reliability performance at one point in time.

When goals are set well, they anticipate what your customer expects when they receive your product. In a perfect world, you customer will find the reliability performance just a bit better than expected.

It’s not a perfect world. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics, on Product Reliability Tagged With: goals

by nomtbf Leave a Comment

Reliability is Not Metrics, It’s Decision Making

Reliability is Not Metrics, It’s Decision Making

Reliability is Not Metrics, It’s Decision Making

MTBF, KPIs, yield, return rate, warranty… bah!

We may use one or more of these when establishing product reliability goals. When tracking performance. When making decisions.

Goals, objectives, specifications, and requirements, are stand-ins for the customer’s experience with the product.

We’re not trying to reduce warranty expenses or shouldn’t be solely focused on just that measure. We need to focus on making decisions that allow our product deliver the expected reliability performance to the customer. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: decision, goals, metrics

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

When is Best Time to Establish Reliability Goals?

When is Best Time to Establish Reliability Goals?

The best time is at the product conception. The second best time as early as possible in the product development process.

It may change. Be refined. Altered later.

That is fine, yet the initial concept needs the boundary condition of a reliability goal. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics, on Product Reliability Tagged With: goals

by Fred Schenkelberg 2 Comments

Ready, Fire, Aim Reliability Goal Setting

Ready, Fire, Aim Reliability Goal Setting

“Keeping the end in mind”, “working toward a common objective” and “providing a vision” are all convention management wisdom based on setting goals.

Seeing a reliability goal is one of the first tasks when creating a reliability plan.

“How good (reliable) does it have to be?”

That is answered with a reliability goal statement.

There is a lot of uncertainty concerning a reliability goal. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics, on Product Reliability Tagged With: goals

by Fred Schenkelberg 2 Comments

Reliability Questions to Ask During a Review

Reliability Questions to Ask During a Review

Asking the right question is important.

During a review meeting (informal or formal) asking a few reliability questions may reveal weaknesses, strengths, or uncertainty. The design team has many priorities and reliability is often difficult to estimate, yet knowing what is and isn’t known provides a clear picture of risks for decision makers.

If you are a decision maker and need to ascertain the reliability risks of the current design, then asking a couple of questions may provide just the insights you need. It also conveys that reliability is on your mind and that you want to have answers that are meaningful and well thought out.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics, on Product Reliability Tagged With: goals

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

What to Specify with Suppliers to Achieve Reliability Goals

What to Specify with Suppliers to Achieve Reliability Goals

Selecting a supplier for components or subsystems involves many aspects including the desired reliability performance.

Once selected the ability of the supplier to provide items that meet or exceed the reliability requirements relies on their understanding of the requirements and operational conditions related to the specific item within the system. It also relies on the supplier’s knowledge of their own design and manufacturing processes as it related to the reliability performance. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics, on Product Reliability Tagged With: goals

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Purpose of a Reliability Program

Purpose of a Reliability Program

The reliable performance of a system is important. It is important to the customer, to our business and to us.

Very few argue that we should ignore the reliability characteristics of a product. We also deem cost, time to market or feature set as important also. The trouble is we can measure the latter directly every day, where the reliability performance is often difficult to measure.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics, on Product Reliability Tagged With: goals

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Duration and Reliability Goals

Duration and Reliability Goals

Coupled with probability is the duration over which the probability applies.

For example, if we desire 99 of 100 to survive, we must state over which period of time this applies. It is proper to state the couplet of 99% reliable over 1 year.

It is not sufficient to define reliability as ‘5-year product’ as it does not contain the information related to how many are expected to survive the 5 years. Likewise, it is not sufficient to say a product has 5 – 9’s reliability (meaning the probability of failure is less than 0.00001) as it does not contain the duration.

If the product has high reliability for only a few seconds, that does not help us make judgments about the first year of life. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics, on Product Reliability Tagged With: goals

by Fred Schenkelberg 2 Comments

Understanding Customer Reliability Expectations

Understanding Customer Reliability Expectations

Once asked a customer what they wanted concerning product reliability.

She fully understood that some units will fail, that it’s matter of chance. She seemed understanding of the difficulty creating every product such that none would fail.

Then she confided that all that is fine, as long as the product she buys does not fail. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics, on Product Reliability Tagged With: goals

by Fred Schenkelberg 1 Comment

How to Connect Reliability Goals to Business Objectives

How to Connect Reliability Goals to Business Objectives

Reliability goals provide you and your team a focus for the reliability program. They provide a measurable way to design, test, and maintain systems that meet customer expectations.

A goal of any kind in a business is relatively easy to set and publish. They are not easy to entwine into the culture of the organization so the objectives desired by achieving the goal become a meaningful focus. A product development team may have hundreds of pages of specifications and a long list of priorities and objectives. Simple listing a reliability goal, no matter how clearly stated, may not be sufficient to garner the interest of your team.

Simple listing a reliability goal, no matter how clearly stated, may not be sufficient to garner the interest of your team.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics, on Product Reliability Tagged With: goals

by Fred Schenkelberg 4 Comments

Perfect Reliability

Perfect Reliability

Is it possible to foresee all reliability issues before a product launch?

No.

I don’t think so. Can we minimize surprises from field failures?

Yes.

The number of potential failures is often unknown.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics, on Product Reliability Tagged With: goals

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Reliability Success Stories

Reliability Success Stories

Reliability engineering has value. It can improve product reliability, increase uptime, and drive customer satisfaction, for example.

Here are a couple of stories based on real situations that resulted in significant value for the organization.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics, on Product Reliability Tagged With: goals

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Murphy’s Law and Reliability

Murphy’s Law and Reliability

It always seems there are more red lights when I’m running late.

This comment and others similar to it caught my attention lately. Is it just Murphy’s Law or something else?

There is an element of luck or chance in many events during our daily lives. The same is true when producing products and the resulting reliability. A lot has to go right for the product to work for the customer.

When something isn’t going as expected, we have a comparison that gains attention. If the lights are red more often, in theory, when I’m running late, maybe the lights are not turning red more often, it’s just that we notice.

For product development, it’s noticing the items that are going well and failing that matter. As reliability professionals, we need to continue to practice being aware of what is expected and what actually happens. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics, on Product Reliability Tagged With: goals

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Reliability Goal Story

Reliability Goal Story

A life-support-equipment company manager desires to conduct a reliability program assessment. The company is experiencing about a 50% per year failure rate and at least the Director of Quality thought it should do better. One of the findings was related to reliability goal setting and how it was used within the organization.

Nearly everyone knew that the product had a 5,000-h Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF) reliability goal, but [Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics, on Product Reliability Tagged With: goals, measures

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Reliability Goals

Reliability Goals

The target, objective, mission or goal is the statement that provides a design team with focus and direction. A well-stated goal will establish the business connection to the technical decisions, related to product durability expectations. A well-stated goal provides clarity across the organization and permits a common language for discussing design, supply chain, and manufacturing decisions.

Let’s explore the definition of a ‘well-stated reliability goal.’ First, is it not simple MTBF, “as good as or better than…” or ‘a 5-year product’. These are common ‘goals’ found across many industries, yet none permit a clear technical understanding of the durability expectations for the product.
The common definition for reliability is [Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics, on Product Reliability Tagged With: goals, warranty

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