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Speaking Of Reliability: Friends Discussing Reliability Engineering Topics | Warranty | Plant Maintenance
Speaking Of Reliability: Friends Discussing Reliability Engineering Topics | Warranty | Plant Maintenance episodes
- Lessons Learned Working From HomeLessons Learned Working From HomeAbstract
Philip and Fred discussing a few things we’ve noticed while working from home full time.
Key PointsJoin Philip and Fred as they discuss
Topics include:- One can get a lot accomplished working online as we all learn how to make it happen.
- Sometimes a photo or video just isn’t the same – especially when doing failure analysis
- So, will this event shift our balance to more working remotely to support teams?
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.
Download Audio RSSShow NotesThe post SOR 568 Lessons Learned Working From Home appeared first on Accendo Reliability.
0 min - Are You a Keyboard Jockey?Are You a Keyboard Jockey?Abstract
Philip and Fred discussing several salient reliability and maintenance pitfalls and the role of continuous learning and solid mentoring for new reliability engineers. Learn how craft bread making, pickle failures, and physics guessing teach us how to recognize the impossible and why being a keyboard jockey is a good place to start, but a bad place to finish.
Key PointsJoin Philip and Fred as they discuss the advanced interrelations between making craft bread, pickle fermentation and applied Physics based guessing applied to Reliability & Maintenance practical topics.
Fred and Phil muse and poke some fun at real issues that include:
- Software Jockeys – the Shiny new coin effect
- Knowing your answer is wrong – applying the “sniff test”
- Recognizing the Impossible
- Parameterized Regression pitfalls
- Applications of MTBF to RAMS Studies
- Forward Asset Predictions with confidence
- The never ending cycle of continuous learning.
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.
Download Audio RSSShow NotesThe show discussed the hazards of being a Reliability Software Keyboard Jockey and relates Fred’s bread making expertise with Philip’s pickle disasters to suggest there are some parallel’s in modern Reliability and Maintenance work. What should you do with a pile of data, and how not to go about the process of getting a correct answer. Phil and Fred touch on the bear traps associated with parameterized regression, impossible results, practical sniff testing, forward asset replacement projections, RAMS implications and the never ending need for continuous learning in the Reliability and Maintenance profession.
The post SOR 567 Are You a Keyboard Jockey? appeared first on Accendo Reliability.
0 min - An Effective Start in Reliability EngineeringAn Effective Start in Reliability EngineeringAbstract
Philip and Fred discussing How to get started in Reliability, Building your Network of Advisors, Using Mentoring to uncover Gold, Thirst and passion for getting better, teamwork and making the inevitable mistake.
Key PointsJoin Philip and Fred as they discuss how to get started in the Reliability role s available today.
Topics include:- How to get started in Reliability yourself – or how to unleash the power of a great new mind.
- What are the key secrets for the next generation of Reliability Engineers?
- Quenching your thirst for getting better – What to do if you are alone, multi-site of part of a large Reliability minded effort.
- Understanding the business dynamics, Communication, and achieving technical soundness by continually learning.
So, 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.
Download Audio RSSShow NotesPhilip and Fred discuss a myriad of topics relevant to getting started and succeeding in the Reliability profession. As reliability professionals we get to work on everything from the smallest micro circuit to the largest of machines ever built. This show discusses how we got our start into the field of reliability back when it wasn’t a defined field of specialization. Salient points are made for the next generation of Reliability professions that include continual learning, the need to have a great mentor who helps guide your development and having a thirst or passion for getting better everyday. Fred and Phil speak to the technology trap, the need for effective communications, the value of technical soundness and the need to appraoch reliability as a people process.
The post SOR 566 An Effective Start in Reliability Engineering appeared first on Accendo Reliability.
0 min - Technical Skills for an Expert Reliability EngineerTechnical Skills for an Expert Reliability EngineerAbstract
Carl and Fred discussing what it takes to be an expert reliability engineer, from a technical point of view.
Key PointsJoin Carl and Fred as they discuss the technical levels of expertise associated with reliability engineering, including expertise in one or two technical subjects, and knowing enough about the broad set of tools to know when to seek out an expert.
Topics include:
- Reliability Engineer as a “technical fellow”
- Technical fellow focuses on technical side
- Reliability engineering has dozens of tools
- In a reliability project, which tool to focus on is preceded by risk assessment
- Both experience and basic knowledge are necessary to become expert in a particular method
- Understand the assumptions that apply to reliability tools, and know the limitations
- Depth and breadth: deep understanding of one or two tools and conversant with all of the tools, knowing when to hand off
- Which tools? opportunistic and interest (passion)
- What makes an expert is ability to learn, willing to ask the right questions, and absorb the information
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.
Download Audio RSSShow NotesSAE Reliability Program Handbook TAHB0009A 2019-05-03https://www.sae.org/standards/content/tahb0009a/
The post SOR 565 Technical Skills for an Expert Reliability Engineer appeared first on Accendo Reliability.
0 min - People Skills for an Expert Reliability EngineerPeople Skills for an Expert Reliability EngineerAbstract
Carl and Fred discussing the most important people skills that are needed to succeed as an expert in a reliability engineering career.
Key PointsJoin Carl and Fred as they discuss the broad subject of people skills, and how to influence engineering organizations in the best possible way.
Topics include:
- Skills apply to different areas of reliability
- Reliability expertise is a journey, rather than a destination
- Aspire to life-long learning
- Reliability experts are good at helping other people apply reliability tools
- Academic expertise is only part of the journey, it also requires application
- One thing that distinguishes an expert is when peers and colleagues come to you for advice
- Expertise has two aspects: positively influencing others and technical skills, both are needed
- People skills include ability to influence
- Read or reread “Seven habits of highly effective people”
- For any project, ask how will we know when we are done and to what quality level?
- Be genuinely interested in people, and listen to them
- Meet people where they are, bring solutions, add value
- Tap into your passion when you are speaking
- Get feedback on your performance
- When talking to a group, talk to the individuals, not the “group”
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.
Download Audio RSSShow NotesThe 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
The post SOR 564 People Skills for an Expert Reliability Engineer appeared first on Accendo Reliability.
0 min - Tips on Failure AnalysisTips on Failure AnalysisAbstract
Kirk and Fred discussing doing failure analysis and the challenges
Key PointsJoin Kirk and Fred as they discuss the many different issues with doing a proper failure analysis
Topics include:- Some failures do not require a lot of investigation such as when a fork lift punches a hole through a box carrying a batch of printers.
- A failed component doesn’t always mean that it was the cause of the failure, as many times in can be the result of external over-stress, and the failed component was a victim not a cause.
- Start with the least destructive analysis, such as inspection and x-ray, before going into more invasive methods.
- A good failure analysis lab that has many customers from a variety of industries can save significant time and costs as the staff may have seen many different failure mechanisms and know the most common causes of failure.
- Fred recalls the failure analysis of an optical drive and the resulting conclusions
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.
Download Audio RSSShow NotesHere is a link to Kirk’s book co-authored with John J. Paschkewitz available from Amazon “Next Generation HALT and HASS: Robust Design of Electronics and Systems”
Here is the link to the US ARMY/CALCE PAPER presented at the 2013 RAMS conference event mentioned in this podcast– “Reliability Prediction – A Continued Reliance on a Misleading Approach” . This is a government document that is in the public domain and should be distributed a read by any engineer that believes failure prediction methodology is useful or beneficial during product development.
The post SOR 563 Tips on Failure Analysis appeared first on Accendo Reliability.
0 min - What are the New Challenges in Reliability Engineering?What are the New Challenges in Reliability Engineering?Abstract
Kirk and Fred discussing the new challenges in reliability engineering, which maybe the old challenges of moving away from the misleading approach of Failure Prediction Methodology (FPM) and for Fred its the continued use of MTBF as a metric for reliability.
Key PointsJoin Kirk and Fred as they discuss their first meeting at a reliability conference and finding out that they had similar thoughts on changes needed in the field.
Topics include:- Kirk meeting the late Charlie Leonard of Boeing 30 years ago at a ESS of Electronic Hardware conference and how that led to a conference call with Dr. Michael Pecht.Soon after, 4 Boeing Commercial Aircraft Engineers and Dr. Ahbijhit Dasgupta from CALCE came to Storage Technology Corporation in 1991 to see what HALT and HASS was and how it was applied.
- The challenges in reliability engineering are getting more difficult with more and more world wide dispersed teams
- Statistics and Statistical Process Control (SPC) has been useful in reducing variation but may not be very much in use today.
- We are forgetting the fundamentals of root cause failure analysis of the early life failures, sometimes referred to as “Infant Mortality”
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.
Download Audio RSSShow NotesHere is a link to Kirk’s book co-authored with John J. Paschkewitz available from Amazon “Next Generation HALT and HASS: Robust Design of Electronics and Systems”
Here is the link to the US ARMY/CALCE PAPER presented at the 2013 RAMS conference event mentioned in this podcast– “Reliability Prediction – A Continued Reliance on a Misleading Approach” . This is a government document that is in the public domain and should be distributed a read by any engineer that believes failure prediction methodology is useful or beneficial during product development.
The post SOR 562 What are the New Challenges in Reliability Engineering? appeared first on Accendo Reliability.
0 min - Reliability Informed Decision MakingReliability Informed Decision MakingAbstract
Chris and Fred discuss the typical decisions that are informed by reliability. It might be easier to list what decisions are not informed by reliability engineering. We came up with a list of 13 … and that is only because we ran out of time. What decisions you think are influenced by reliability engineering? Listen to this podcast to learn more.
Key PointsJoin Chris and Fred as they discuss how reliability engineering informs decisions. Reliability engineering activities are a waste of time if they don’t inform a decision. They simply make you feel better about doing something without actually improving anything.
Topics include:
- Are there any decisions that aren’t informed by reliability? This is not flippant. People spend a lot of time and money on making products, systems and things that do something. Or many things. So reliability
- Decision #1 – what is the list of the vital few ways that are limiting or defining the reliability of my thing? This is a common theme of our podcasts. The vital few are the relatively small things that are making your reliability what it is. This means you only need to target a small number of things to improve the reliability of your ‘thing.’
- Decision #2 – what do I (as a manager) help my team reach their (and my) reliability goals? Managers who just sit back and expect everyone else to make a perfect product aren’t managers at all. They are frauds. Managers need to proactively manage, keep resources, have margins and a tonne of other things to be able to help and guide the engineers making some things.
- Decision #3 – what goals do I give my team(s)? This could be very quantitative (see our reliability allocation webinar). It could be aspirational or relative (… let’s halve our field failure rate over the next three years). Either way, if your team doesn’t know where they are going, they will never get there.
- Decision #4 – do I proceed to the next level of ‘production’? … or do I need to keep improving reliability? Obviously.
- Decision #5 – what do I do to improve the reliability of my ‘thing’? … hint – you need to know the vital few. Again obviously. And you must have decided what those vital few are.
- Decision #6 – How do I best support my ‘thing’ once it is being used? How often do I conduct preventive maintenance? Hint – too much preventive maintenance drives down reliability. What about condition-based maintenance (CBM)?
- Decision #7 – What contingencies or elements need to appear in our business plan? … to help all these decisions.
- Decision #8 – What does reliability mean for my business plan? Think warranty periods, the cost of failure and everything else. This includes finance. Understanding reliability can inform a decision to open a new factory (for example). And one of the issues here is that sometimes reliability engineers can’t easily talk to the finance team – so the information might be there but it doesn’t influence the decision.
- Decision #9 – How do we manage the risk of our product? And most risk deals with the sometimes random nature of our ‘thing’ doing something it wasn’t supposed to.
- Decision #10 – How do I structure my supply chain to support my product? This touches on logistics engineering. And this is not just parts and sparing. Some suppliers will change their components subtly, and without thinking it will change the performance of your thing. So you need to not only understand how many parts you need to have on hand AND what these parts need to do so they don’t affect the reliability of your system.
- Decision #11 – How do I market my ‘thing’ with its reliability as a selling point? We need to know the metrics that matter to the ‘thing,’ what metrics matter to our customers, and what needs to be said. We don’t want to over-promise. We also don’t want to be so vague in our terms and numbers that it means nothing to a customer who sits on the fence. Sometimes we are forced to use metrics the market demands through overwhelming precedent. Like failures in time (FIT) used by electrical components which is a simple point estimate at failure rate. Which doesn’t account for wear-out.
- Decision #12 – What material do I use for my ‘thing’? Gorilla glass essentially allowed smartphones to be a thing. Because they would otherwise be too unreliable.
- Decision #13 – What is the technology roadmap for our ‘things’? We want to be careful here – reliability (perceived or otherwise) of technologies that have not yet been developed should not limit blue-sky thinking for any technology road map. But computing power is based on (in part) more capability for smaller size and power metrics. And this is limited by reliability. It depends on how you frame it.
What did we miss? … we know we did, so let’s see them in the comments.
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.
Download Audio RSSShow NotesThe post SOR 561 Reliability Informed Decision Making appeared first on Accendo Reliability.
0 min - Strategies for Designing a Reliable ProductStrategies for Designing a Reliable ProductAbstract
Chris and Fred discuss different strategies for reliability. We start with a couple of strategies that don’t work (big shout out to virtually every military customer … ever!) and then come up with some approaches that have been shown to work – at least in some circumstances. And that is the key – different scenarios demand different strategies. Sound interesting? Then this is the podcast for you.
Key PointsJoin Chris and Fred as they discuss strategies for designing reliable products. We get companies that think all they need to do is hire the ‘best’ engineers do build or design something – which means everything will be reliable … right? It is funny how many of these companies also think that customers don’t know how to use their products and flat out abuse them – and that is why they have high field failure rates. Then there is every military customer in the world who always pride themselves on how flexible and cunning their mindsets are when it comes to achieving challenging and dangerous missions. Funny how they revert to ‘drill sergeant lawyers’ when they produce a ‘War and Peace’ scale contractual/requirements document and think (hope?) their work is done. So these approaches don’t work. So what approaches do?
Strategies include:
- (reliability mindset) Baking reliability into the organization where every engineer is taught, exercised, practiced and assessed in terms of their reliability plan. Reliability is not something separate. Reliability is an equally important part of every design decision. So this means that electrical engineers (for example) know their reliability goals, where they come from, who they go to if they have issues with these goals, how they interact with vendors, telling these vendors that ‘FIT rates’ aren’t good enough and they need more and so on. This is a reliability culture. So it is a part of how you do business – from senior managers to the graduate engineers. Not a separate thing, but a part of how you do business.
- (prototypical) Build. Test. Fix. This is a strategy that is not universally accepted. Building prototypes quickly and subjecting them to things like Highly Accelerated Life Testing (HALT) is a proven way to quickly improve reliability. But there are some cases where you simply won’t get a prototype … or a prototype quickly enough. But perhaps the biggest problem with build-test-fix is that it can make people stop thinking about preventing failures before we even get to a prototype. Failure Mode and Effect Analyses (FMEAs) are proven ways of getting ahead of the ‘failure curve.’ So build-test-fix can often fall down if this is the only approach you use.
- (analytical) Simulation and modeling. You can learn a lot through modeling or simulating your ‘thing’ in a computer before it is built. Not only does this work our where your ‘thing’ will fail, but it will tell you what you need to do to reduce that stress through design change. But there are problems with an analytical approach as well. There is no good in studying a failure mechanism for 10 years so that you know it back to front … if your time to market window has come and gone. And then there are those who research analyses that (loosely) supports an existing position.
- Failure hunting. This is a little of every one of the strategies above. Quite simply, we hunt failures at every stage of design. Finding the vital few at the very start (FMEAs) then through prototyping (HALT) and then from any other data source. This is a very simple philosophy … but one that really works! Some might say things like ‘how do we know how reliable your thing is?’ or ‘how do you know if we make it too reliable?’ and so on. But there are precious few (i.e. virtually no) instances of products being accidentally too reliable. So if you are not afraid of making it too reliable, why wouldn’t you devote resources to finding failures versus measuring reliability (where the latter is often a lot more expensive)?
- Over-engineering and then shaving margin. Sometimes the cost is not nearly as important as time to market. So we (deliberately) over-engineer from the start and try to shave margin as the design matures. But this only works in certain circumstances. And weight is an important consideration these days (think carbon emissions for transportation). But by the same token … customers always want to do more. They want phones to get wet (they won’t say this), get thrown across a room (they won’t say this either) and so on until these things become the industry standard. Based on those few phones that were able to withstand this punishment from day one.
- (standardized) Build to a specification. These specifications come from somewhere else. International standards. Perhaps explicitly written customer requirements. Industry endorsed ‘drop tests.’ And if we meet the specification or standard … then it is good! The surface-level issue with this approach is that we rely on all these standards and specifications and industry practices to reflect what the customer wants AND what the customer sees in the market. But the bigger problem is that you very quickly create an organization that stops thinking. Why would they? Someone else has done this for them. But if the customer wants something new – they will need to wait for the standards committees to realize this, endorse a specific measure as ‘good’ and then (10 years later) re-issue an updated standard. Does this sound good?
- Make customers test engineers. This is not an approach you should endorse lightly. Essentially this means you ship your product to the customer with the intent of making something more reliable once they find issues with it. This has worked well when one company who manufactured servers sent four test engineers to their customer after they installed the server to make sure that failures were removed from the design. There was some marketing pushback, but the customer appreciated this commitment. But perhaps this should not be an approach for consumer electronics …
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.
Download Audio RSSShow NotesThe post SOR 560 Strategies for Designing a Reliable Product appeared first on Accendo Reliability.
0 min - Reliability Management Ramblings Part #1Understanding Customer Reliability NeedsAbstract
Chris and Carl discuss reliability management.
Key PointsJoin Chris and Carl as they talk about reliability management. Chris and Carl present a Reliability Management Tutorial at the annual Reliability and Maintainability Symposium (RAMS) which will be held at Florida’s Rosen Plaza Hotel in January 2021 … COVID-19 permitting! Reliability management is an interesting topic. We could spend our entire life studying reliability management (… sounds a bit boring though). But by the same token … there are so many things that are just as relevant now as they were in the early 20th century. So what does this mean? Let’s start rambling.
Topics include:
- Personal Skills. All your effort is for nothing if you don’t motivate people to do ‘good’ things. And this means not only making people want to do ‘reliable’ things – but teaching people what they need to do to get there.
- Beginning with the end in mind. Chris and Carl’s reliability management tutorial involve 5 steps on the path to good reliability engineering. And perhaps the most important part of these steps is knowing where you want to be (… in 1, 3, 5 and 10 years from now – for example). And defining where you want to go, you need to focus on the four parts of the reliability definition.
- So we need a strategic vision. This includes our definition of reliability. But perhaps more important than this is the organizational part of this. The people. The skills. The processes. The procedures.
- … and back to our definition of reliability. What matters to your customers? They won’t tell you all of them. For example, customers take a dim view of things that fail early. We call this infant mortality. So we may want to have a ‘six-month reliability’ requirement – not because the customer asked for it (they won’t) but because we know we will lose their confidence if this happens.
- The ‘vital few.’ There will typically only be a few dominant ways that your ‘thing’ will fail. This is great! Because fixing these vital few will have a huge (and good) effect on reliability. So we need to ‘hunt’ the vital few or the important issues. Trying to fix everything means everything is equally unimportant.
- And we want useful goals. Not perfect ones. You can’t know every single design challenge you will face before you create something. Which means that you cannot know exactly what your ultimate performance will be. So you will need to stop investing so much time and money in getting your internal goals and test objectives perfect before you design your ‘thing.’ Because if everyone thinks the goals are ‘perfect’ they will be afraid to do anything about it when they realize they can’t get there.
- Knowing how to calculate reliability is useful. Knowing how to achieve reliability is important. All we want to do is positively affect the reliability mindset of people. And sometimes we get too focused on mathematics and equations and not just making the thing better.
- There is a difference between indicators and performance characteristics. The number of defects in a component is important. It is a reliability indicator. It is not reliability. It is related to reliability. Know the difference between an indicator and a performance characteristic. An indicator is something you use to gauge the performance of your team. Performance matters to your customer.
- Don’t use the MTBF. Enough said.
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.
Download Audio RSSShow NotesThe post SOR 559 Reliability Management Ramblings Part #1 appeared first on Accendo Reliability.
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