Psychology and Reliability
Abstract
Chris and Fred discuss the psychology behind (bad) reliability decisions. Humans run (and ruin) everything!
Key Points
Join Chris and Fred as they discuss the different ways psychology can influence reliability engineering decisions. Reliability is often something where feedback is delayed. That is, failure will occur years after a shortcut was made during design. And that is where psychology steps in.
Topics include:
- Let’s go nuclear. Australian politicians recently looked at creating a nuclear power generation industry where there previously was none. None of the conversations about feasibility revolved around psychology and the role that regulation and industry culture need to play. All the big issues in nuclear power plants have not been engineering failures … they have all been breakdowns in psychology.
- Humans are not good at properly dealing with rare events. Whether it is smoking, over-eating, speeding, climate change, safety, or reliability, we struggle to make rational decisions. Why? Psychology. We are animals, and not all animals are evolved to invest in the future. Society and civilization tend to involve us fighting out our primal urges to ‘eat all the sugar we can eat right now.’ And that includes sleeping today and not worrying about the disaster we might miss.
- And that sucks for reliability. It is really easy to delay/avoid/postpone reliability engineering stuff, as that offers immediate gratification (we don’t have to deal with it this week). But there is always a price to pay, and that price gets much higher the longer you delay/avoid/postpone. Even though you can do reliability and quality early enough to speed everything else up!
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.
Show Notes
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