Speaking Of Reliability: Friends Discussing Reliability Engineering Topics | Warranty | Plant Maintenance

Reliability Gap Assessment Abstract Carl and Fred discussing the second step in achieving high reliability: “Develop a Reliability Gap Assessment.” Key Points Join Carl and Fred as they discuss doing a gap assessment, how it is done and why it is essential to achieving high reliability. Topics include: The core principles of doing a gap assessment You need to know organizations capabilities, their shortcomings Where are you today? How good are you? With Reliability Strategic Vision, we ask “where are you going?” With Reliability Gap Assessment, we ask “what is your current capability?” Gaps can be organizational, cultural, methods To learn gaps in methods, you will ask: to what extent do you use (method)?, how do you use (method)?, why do you use (method)?, what examples for (method)? Knowing the gaps helps you zero in on the areas where you need to improve Essence of gap is the tension between your goals and the barriers or risks to achieving your goals There is not a canned list of question to identify gaps, you need to develop your own list of questions Fact finding: where are you today compared to where you need to be? Future decisions should be based on the gaps Communication is key to learning gaps Map gaps to the Maturity Matrix May need to change the culture to achieve reliability objectives Gap Assessment is not an audit You don’t know where a Gap Assessment will end 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. Download Audio RSS Related Topics: SOR 075 Gap Assessment Process(Opens podcast in a new browser tab) SOR 343 Why Perform a Reliability Gap Analysis(Opens podcast in a new browser tab)   The post SOR 854 Reliability Gap Assessment appeared first on Accendo Reliability.

Reliability Strategic Vision Abstract Carl and Fred discussing the first step in achieving high reliability: “Develop a Reliability Strategic Vision.” Key Points Join Carl and Fred as they discuss the elements that go into a reliability vision, and how it is developed. Topics include: Chapter 5 of the book: The Process of Reliability Engineering” The first step is knowing where you’re going Developing a Reliability Strategic Vision Why strategy is so important It’s not a generic Corporate mission statement The elements of a reliability strategic vision The four parts embedded in the definition of reliability: probability statement, primary function, environmental conditions, duration The vision for reliability includes reliability and organizational goals Where are you heading from a reliability point of view? The importance of reputation, brand identity Consider the overall lifecycle cost Reliability can be a critical part of your marketing position; but it has to be real Safety must be an essential part of your reliability vision 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 RSS Related Topics: SOR 005 Importance of Reliability Goal and Vision Discussions(Opens podcast in a new browser tab)   The post SOR 853 Reliability Strategic Vision appeared first on Accendo Reliability.

Decisions and Value Abstract Chris and Fred discuss the importance of understanding value when you make decisions. And value needs to mean something to you and your organization. Not something in a dictionary. Key Points Join Chris and Fred as they discuss how important it is to understand the concept of ‘value’ as it relates to making the right decision. Many people almost ‘run’ past the discussion on what value means to them so they can start getting busy doing something. Like testing. Effort often feels like generating value. But that is not always the case. Topics include: How much fuel do you need for a car drive? Well … you need to start by understanding where you are going. What vehicle you are driving? What is its fuel efficiency? What it is towing? Many organizations (including reliability engineers) rush to come up with an estimate of how much fuel you need. It might be a literature review of other ‘car drives.’ It might be a standard that purports to say how much fuel the ‘average car drive’ needs. This approach never works. So … where are YOU going? It usually starts with leadership. Is the leader simply trying to get the ‘reliability’ or ‘quality’ guy to OK his or her favorite (pre-ordained) outcome of his decision? If this is the case, then the leader ‘values’ something that is very different to organizational good. Here is an example. A mining company wanted to reduce downtime … and so they demanded that Servicing or Preventive Maintenance Duration be halved. And of course … failures went through the roof. Where did they go wrong? They focused on maintenance duration and not operational availability. As soon as they got the right metrics, then the engineers got to work and were able to come up with a longer maintenance duration, but instead of doing it weekly, it was done every two weeks. So downtime decreased (good) while maintenance duration went up. So what do you value? 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 RSS Related Topics: Reliability Goals(Opens article in a new browser tab)   The post SOR 852 Decisions and Value appeared first on Accendo Reliability.

ALT Sample Size Abstract Chris and Fred discuss how many samples you need to conduct Accelerated Life Testing or ALT … and a little bit about what ALT is. Key Points Join Chris and Fred as they discuss the challenge of selecting how many samples you need to conduct Accelerated Life Testing or ALT. Firstly … what is ALT? Topics include: What is ALT? ALT involves increasing the stress to a product (think force, temperature, humidity, power et cetera) to try and compress 3 years’ worth of use into something like 2 days. To be able to do this, we need to understand how your product fails, so you know what failure mechanism to focus on to identify the right stress. Is failure based on temperature? … force? … both? What is an ‘accelerated life model’ and why are there so many of them? Once you know the dominant failure mechanism of your product, then you need to know the physical process behind it. For example, many chemical reactions are based on concepts like ‘activation energy,’ which helps you work out what effect additional temperature will have on failure. The ‘Arrhenius model’ can be helpful for this. But the reason there are a lot of accelerated life models is that there are lots of different failure mechanisms. How many samples do I need? What decision are you trying to inform. If you are trying to differentiate between two potential materials? Then perhaps not many samples. Do you believe that there is a material that should outlast the service life of your product of orders of magnitude … but you need to confirm this – then perhaps you need fewer samples again. But if your failure mechanism is accounting for around about 4 % of warranty period failures, and you can tolerate up to 5 % … then you might need lots of samples to get the level of confidence you need to make a decision. But I want to test everything on my product! As in … every possible way it can fail. If you want to do this … then ALT is not for you. Confidence is a measure of you … not your product. What does that mean? Many organizations test without any objective or decision in mind … simply because they want ‘confidence’ that reliability stuff is happening. You can’t test your way to reliability. So always start with your decision! 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 RSS Related Topics: Fundamentals of ALT(Opens webinar recording in a new browser tab) How to Create an ALT Plan(Opens webinar recording in a new browser tab) The post SOR 851 ALT Sample Size appeared first on Accendo Reliability.

Sedentary Inertia in Quality Abstract Chris and Dianna discuss the ‘sedentary inertia’ that many companies experience when they need to change … but can’t (don’t want to). Especially in the world of quality! Key Points Join Chris and Dianna as they discuss the challenges many organizations have when they need to change … but really don’t want to. We sometimes call this ‘sedentary inertia’ … where there is a tendency for things that aren’t moving to STAY not moving. Sound familiar? Topics include: How can quality help you stay competitive? Stop being resistant to change. For example, there are some quality teams out there that adamantly believe that if you can’t test for something in their laboratory (due to capacity, time, money and so on) … then it can’t be a requirement. It’s almost as if those quality guys think they are customer! It usually happens when leadership is lacking. Why? Because the ‘quality guys’ can only become the reinforced roadblocks that many organizations feel they are when they aren’t answerable or challengable. If the boss is competent or confident enough to push any part of their organization along, then there is always a chance that those parts can become reinforced roadblocks to support their agendas. You need good ‘quality’ guys and girls to innovate. Why? Because novel technologies still need to result in high-quality, easy-to-produce, defect free, reliable and safe. They just need to look outside what the standard says (… there is never a standard for emerging technology!) So what do you need to do? Leadership. Culture. Ensuring is quality is always important. Which starts with making sure quality never becomes irrelevant. 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 RSS Related Topics:   3 Ideas to Overcome Organizational Inertia(Opens article in a new browser tab) The post SOR 850 Sedentary Inertia in Quality appeared first on Accendo Reliability.

Two Sides of a Coin: Quality and Reliability Abstract Dianna and Chris discussing their different viewpoints of quality and reliability: how they are really two sides of a coin that are supported by the culture of an organization and by individual contributors. Key Points Join Dianna and Chris as they discuss two sides of a coin: quality and reliability. Topics include: quality and reliability as part of the leadership and development culture practitioners modeling and showcasing quality and reliability in development imaginary reliability and quality fairies 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 RSS Show Notes Dianna and Chris talk about both quality and reliability in development projects. Quality and Reliability are different concepts. But there is not a clear distinction between them. The important part is – the customer! Chris talks about the cultural motivations for involving quality and reliability early.  His list of 5 motivating categories for finding problems, from worst to best: Problems in the field (a disaster). A problem uncovered during manufacturing (also a disaster). Problems uncovered during a review. Problems found during testing. A problem that was prevented (the best situation). Dianna talks about the power of the personality. Staff engineers can do what they can where they are, to promote quality and reliability methods. They can affect change in the culture of a workplace from within. But there is a risk – without the culture supporting quality and reliability during development, that personality may be the only safety net for a group. The best situation: a culture of quality and reliability with personalities that promote these fields through partnership. Related Topics SOR 742 Reliability and Quality(Opens podcast in a new browser tab) The post SOR 849 Two Sides of a Coin: Quality and Reliability appeared first on Accendo Reliability.

Monitoring Manufacturing Product Reliability Abstract Kirk and Fred discussing how to ensure that the quality and reliability of the last units produced from a manufacturing line is the same as the first units produced. Key Points Join Kirk and Fred as they discuss the fundamental concern of any manufacturing operation, sustaining quality throughout the manufacturing life of the product. Topics include: W. Ed Deming, PhD. taught the world manufacturing how to monitor manufacturing processes capability and uniformity through Statistical Process Control (SPC), but sometimes the process being monitored is “because we can” not because it is or has been a significant risk to reliability. So many times a failure mechanism is introduced to a manufacturing line way back up in the supply chain. An example is a PEM (plastic encapsulated microcircuit) epoxy not having the correct formula for the TCE (thermal coefficient of expansion) to match the lead frame structure and may lead to delamination or wire bond failures. So many suppliers and so many potential mechanisms in the supply chain may lose their process control without knowing it. The best and most relevant way to ensure the quality of the product is by making detailed failure analysis of  final test failures and field failures early in the production cycle and then quickly apply corrective actions to minimize manufacturing process variation 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 RSS Show Notes You can now purchase the recent recording of Kirk Gray’s Hobbs Engineering 8 (two 4 hour sessions) hour Webinar “Rapid and Robust Reliability Development 2022 HALT & HASS Methodologies Online Seminar” from this link. Please click on this link to access a relatively new analysis of traditional reliability prediction methods article from the US ARMY and CALCE titled  “Reliability Prediction – Continued Reliance on a Misleading Approach” For more information on the newest discovery testing methodology here is a link to the book “Next Generation HALT and HASS: Robust design of Electronics and Systems” written by Kirk Gray and John Paschkewitz. Related Topics: Fundamentals of Reliability Performance Monitoring(Opens in a new browser tab) The post SOR 848 Monitoring Manufacturing Product Reliability appeared first on Accendo Reliability.

Issues with Single Stress Testing Abstract Kirk and Fred discussing a question from a listener regarding a specific failure mechanism and time to failure for the same, and how most failures are not due to a single stress condition. Key Points Join Kirk and Fred as they discuss a solder crack and the forces that will propagate the crack to a point of failure. Topics include: How so many of the single failure mechanism, such as solder cracks or PEM package de-lamination will be found in the stress testing lab, the reality of the product in field conditions will have other factors that contribute or modify the rate of crack or de-lamination and makes it very difficult to estimate “field life” from “test chamber life”. Any models of fatigue damage must be confirmed by empirical testing to show the models are valid. Boeing Aircraft will actually load a wing structure to empirical failure to confirm its models of fatigue damage on real hardware. Even though many companies have made actual measurements of the shipping stresses that their product will be subjected to on the way to its destination, they really cannot capture the wide distribution of worst case combinations of stresses that will occur through the world shipping services. Many if not most failure mechanisms have more than one stress driving it to failure and the combinations and distributions of the multiple stress effects on the rate of failure make it difficult if not impossible to determine the field life from a single stress experiment. 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 RSS Show Notes You can now purchase the recent recording of Kirk Gray’s Hobbs Engineering 8 (two 4 hour sessions) hour Webinar “Rapid and Robust Reliability Development 2022 HALT & HASS Methodologies Online Seminar” from this link. Please click on this link to access a relatively new analysis of traditional reliability prediction methods article from the US ARMY and CALCE titled  “Reliability Prediction – Continued Reliance on a Misleading Approach” For more information on the newest discovery testing methodology here is a link to the book “Next Generation HALT and HASS: Robust design of Electronics and Systems” written by Kirk Gray and John Paschkewitz. Related Topic: Recognizing Basic Gear Fatigue Failure Patterns(Opens in a new browser tab) The post SOR 847 Issues with Single Stress Testing appeared first on Accendo Reliability.

Stuck in Your Job Abstract Chris and Fred discuss what you can do to feel good about your job … including when you know it is time to move on. Key Points Join Chris and Fred as they discuss that not uncommon feeling many of us get when we feel stuck in a job. Is there anything you can do? Do you stay or do you go? Topics include: Some leaders (managers) don’t get it. And by ‘it’ we mean today’s workforce. The amount of complaints we have heard about ‘Gen Z’ or ‘millennials’ and how they are impossible to lead. Not true. The world has never been more productive. So it’s not the ‘young people’ … its the ‘old white guys in suits.’ Don’t underestimate the value of an idea. Steve Jobs was a jerk. But he was the leader of one of the most successful companies ever. How does this work? People want to feel like they are contributing to something amazing … even if the boss is a jerk (sometimes). Jobs was amazing at creating a vision (like an iPhone) and being amazing at having an organization focus on it. So … do you know what idea you are contributing to in your organization? … so what does job satisfaction look like for you? And this is tricky. No job is perfect. What can you tolerate? What can’t you tolerate? So even if the job is amazing from someone else’s perspective, it might not work for you. Don’t skip the step of trying to find what you need more than other people. Don’t just complain … be proactive. Do something. If you are frustrated with one leader, look for another mentor who gets you. If other people take credit for your work, start blowing your own trumpet. Maybe you can make a proposal to your leadership team about the job or project you would like to start. If you try these OR these things are not part of what you think ‘job satisfaction is … then it is up to you to remove yourself from that situation. 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 RSS Related Topic SOR 866 Career Strategies (Opens podcast in a new browser tab) The post SOR 846 Stuck in Your Job appeared first on Accendo Reliability.

RAMS Warts and All Abstract Chris and Fred discuss how it felt like the 2023 Reliability, Availability and Maintainability Symposium (RAMS) went? Was it a success? Is it going downhill? Key Points Join Chris and Fred as they discuss how the 2023 RAM(S) Symposium that just finished in January 2023. RAMS is (or was?) one of the pre-eminent gatherings of reliability talent in the world.  But it is? Topics include: No it is not. It might have been good once. Not anymore. Why not? Leadership. The board of directors are representatives of different societies who ‘sponsor’ the symposium. These societies are not actually sponsors as they make money from the symposium. Board members are seldom seen, host private parties, and receive perks (bribes) from hotels clambering for the board to choose them. So we have clear conflicts of interest across a board of disinterested board members who are more interested in having a good time. It is that bad. But doesn’t the board have to work hard to make it happen? For some … yes  (at least a little bit). But it is the separate (volunteer) management committee who are the real backbone of the symposium. And most of them are frustrated with everything as well. What does that mean? This year’s RAMS was held in a hotel that adjoins a shopping mall. Potential authors are being frustrated with reviewers who don’t judge papers based on merit … they judge papers based on it aligning with their worldview. The ‘theme’ of each symposium has minimal relevance to what actually happens. Money that could be spent on services and amenities for attendees is instead delivered back to the societies. And so on. What does this mean moving forward? Perhaps we need to create a new symposium that goes back to what RAMS used to be … 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 RSS Related Topic RM 108: A Preview of the Upcoming SMTA Pan Pacific Microelectronics Symposium(Opens podcast in a new browser tab) 9 Tips to Get the Most Out of Your Next Maintenance Conference(Opens podcast in a new browser tab)   The post SOR 845 RAMS Warts and All appeared first on Accendo Reliability.