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by Katie Switzer 2 Comments

Why Parents Make the Best Reliability Engineers

Why Parents Make the Best Reliability Engineers

I am a parent of two young children. As a result of my experiences as a mom, I feel that parents make great Reliability Engineers because there are so many shared skill sets. Please enjoy this lighthearted comparison to start your week out with a little humor.

First, I have to point out the development of a brand new Reliability Engineer requires the same skills of lubrication and vibration that the conception of a child requires. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Advanced Engineering Culture, Articles, on Leadership & Career Tagged With: asset-management, engineering, Pump, reliability, reliability engineering

by Kevin Stewart Leave a Comment

RCA Templates Again

RCA Templates Again

RCA Templates Can Be Used

In my last article,  RCA Templates Use or not?, I discussed templates and suggested that while beneficial for many things, they may not provide as much value for those doing RCA’s.  This is because for any specific effect, the variability in the cause tree is significant and difficult to predict.  This doesn’t mean that there are no options to utilize templates to help speed up the process, but perhaps not in the way that people might be used to. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, on Tools & Techniques, Reliability Reflections Tagged With: Rca, reliability

by Fred Schenkelberg 3 Comments

Asking Questions is Reliability Engineering

Asking Questions is Reliability Engineering

Finding solutions is reliability engineering too.

Have you noticed that finding solutions often requires just the right question, the proper framing of the issue, the query that reveals the problem and solution?

One of the best ways to lead a team and provide a focus on reliability performance is to ask the right questions.

Understanding objectives, risks, and failures is what we primarily do as reliability professionals. We work with teams to achieve or improve reliability performance.

We ask questions. [Read more…]

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

by Kirk Gray Leave a Comment

Required Case History for Reliability Engineers

Required Case History for Reliability Engineers

One for the (Reliability) Books

The GM Ignition switch failure case history should be required reading for all reliability engineers.

It is rare to have insight into any internal company history of serious electronic and electromechanical failures. Failure analysis and the causes of electronics or electromechanical systems failure can be a difficult investigation for any manufacturing company. Disclosure of the history and data is rarely if ever published due to the potential liability and litigation costs as well as loss of reputation for reliability and safety.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Accelerated Reliability, Articles, on Product Reliability Tagged With: field failure, reliability

by Fred Schenkelberg 4 Comments

Key Elements for Your Project Specific Reliability Plan

Key Elements for Your Project Specific Reliability Plan

A plan is a guide or roadmap for intended action.

A reliability plan is also a collection of specific tasks and milestones and enhanced with a rationale to allow the entire team fully understand their role accomplishing the reliability objectives.

The plan is a way to achieve the desired business objectives. Meaning the product is reliable enough to meet customer expectations, minimize warranty expenses, and garner market acceptance. The plan is just a plan, it is the accomplishment of the tasks, the decision which improves the design, the signals monitored that stabilize the supply chain and assembly process, that make the difference.

A plan without action is not worth the effort. [Read more…]

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

by nomtbf Leave a Comment

Why do we talk about reliability?

Why do we talk about reliability?

  • To make decisions
  • To estimate reliability
  • To understand risk

#182062550 / gettyimages.com

We talk about reliability because it matters. The ability to estimate reliability allows us to make design and development decisions. The ability to monitor reliability allows us to adjust the design, suppliers or expectations about a product. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: MTBF, reliability

by nomtbf Leave a Comment

Question use of reliability testing standards

Each of us have seen product life or component reliability claims on product literature or data sheets. We may even have received such claims stated as goals and been asked to support the claim with some form of an experiment. Standards bodies from ANSI, BSI, ISO, IEC, and others from around the world provide standard methods for testing products. This includes product life testing in some cases. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: reliability, Standards, testing

by nomtbf Leave a Comment

International Day of Failure

In light of the International Day of Failure, Oct 13th, let’s consider failure from a reliability engineer’s point of view. We work to understand and avoid product failures. When a product fails to deliver the desired performance attribute it is tossed away, returned, replaced, repaired, or tolerated. This may occur before or after the value of the product has been achieved. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: engineer, Failure, reliability

by nomtbf Leave a Comment

What is Reliability

What is Reliability

Ilities

Reliability, maintainability, availability, or the ‘ilities’ are common in our language with reference to products, services, equipment, and people. Joe is regularly available for the meeting; We can count on (depend or rely) Sara to finish the report on time; My car starts every morning without fail; and many more. What is meant with these concepts and specifically how do we manage achieving and sustaining business objectives related to these ‘ility’ concepts? The purpose of this short paper [Read more…]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: reliability

by Fred Schenkelberg 17 Comments

Calculating Lognormal Distribution Parameters

Calculating Lognormal Distribution Parameters

The lognormal distribution has two parameters, μ, and σ. These are not the same as mean and standard deviation, which is the subject of another post, yet they do describe the distribution, including the reliability function. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, CRE Preparation Notes, Probability and Statistics for Reliability Tagged With: Discrete and continuous probability distributions, function, Lognormal Distribution, reliability, Standard Deviation

by nomtbf Leave a Comment

Datasheet MTBF

Some many years ago I ran across a data sheet for a cooling fan (used to cool a desktop computer, for example) that listed the fan’s life as 50,000 hours MTBF. The big bold lettering was on the data sheet and was the only use of bold on the entire data sheet. One couldn’t miss it. The computers we used these fans within had a one year warranty, plus were expected to operate for a home computer user for about 5 years. Thus, we would expect the fan to also operate for five years without failure. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: MTBF, reliability

by nomtbf Leave a Comment

5 Reliability Training Options

Just answered a question on where to find reliability engineering training on basics and statistics. There are plenty of options and below I’m listing just where to find the many, many options available to you. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: basics, education, reliability, statistics

by nomtbf Leave a Comment

Acceleration factors

Acceleration factors
gear used for a rock climbing anchor
Gear for anchor during rock climbing

Temperature acceleration factor for ALT planning (question posted to Linkedin Society of Reliability engineers group, 5/7/12

Hello, can anyone advise me how to calculate temperature acceleration factor for a complex system including cards, RF elements, cables, motors and moving parts? Is the Arrhenius model valid for such systems, or there are more precise models? Thank you! [Read more…]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: acceleration, Arrhenius, factor, reliability

by nomtbf Leave a Comment

Parts count variation

Just a short post to point to a newly added paper to the reference section. A few years ago I recalled seeing a paper that studied the difference to expect between various parts count methods and actual results. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: parts count, prediction, Product Reliability, reliability

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Engineering Management

Engineering Management

As 12%* of the CRE exam, this is a major section, yet not a very difficult one. There are three basic areas:

  • strategic management
  • reliability program management
  • ethics, safety, and reliability

If you’ve ever needed to secure funding or samples for a reliability test or had to respond to customer field returns, then you probably already understand the value of reliability.

In some businesses, product reliability is critical to the product’s success. Some businesses strive to be the leading ‘reliable’ producer in the market. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, CRE Preparation Notes, Reliability Management Tagged With: Benefits of reliability engineering, engineering, Product Reliability, reliability, safety

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