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

Carl and Fred dive into the essentials of building a reliability program, emphasizing the need for a strategic team and essential tools like FMEA. They discuss overcoming challenges related to design for reliability, highlighting the importance of management support. Evaluating supplier reliability is also covered, pointing out lessons learned from major corporations. The hosts stress the significance of developing a tailored reliability plan and conducting gap assessments, ensuring a strong foundation for improving reliability practices.

Discover the essentials of vibration testing and its importance in product design. Learn how to consider real-world usage and customer interactions during testing. The dangers of blindly following standards are highlighted, urging a tailored approach. Explore methods for assessing mobile phone durability and the complexities of simulating real-life conditions in labs. Gain insights into managing stress factors in testing for improved accuracy, and laugh along with anecdotes that underscore the need for thorough longevity testing.

MTBF and an Indicator Abstract Chris and Fred discuss this thing called the MTBF … and how it (perhaps!) can be used in some reliability engineering applications … sometimes! Key Points Join Chris and Fred as they discuss if (and how) the MTBF can be useful for reliability applications. But haven’t we been really, really, really adamant that it is a bad thing? And to be clear … the MTBF stands for Mean Time Between Failure. Wouldn’t we want to measure the MTBF to see if things are failing less often? Topics include: Can the MTBF be helpful? Perhaps. But only as an INDICATOR of system health. That is, if you try to improve the reliability, availability and maintainability performance of a product or system, you would expect the MTBF to improve (get better). So it then becomes an indicator that can help validate if there is an improvement in something. But the MTBF is not helpful as a PARAMETER. What does this mean? If you want to improve availability by optimizing servicing intervals, then the MTBF will not help you in any way. You instead need to understand the Rate of Occurrence of Failures after Servicing (ROFAS) of your system, model the maintenance-induced failure rate of your servicing activities and so on to find the right servicing interval. And once you do, you will see an improvement in overall system MTBF without the MTBF of any components being used to get this improvement. In fact … trying to use the MTBF in order to improve the MTBF … usually gets in the way of improvement. … and the MTBF comes with BAGGAGE! The MTBF is the most over-used, ridiculously simplified metric in the world of reliability engineering. Many people believe that the reliability IS the MTBF. It isn’t. Trying to do reliability and availability improvement using the MTBFs of components and system elements NEVER works. It hides the information you need to make the right decisions as it is over-simplified. And so it is very hard for an organization to have the MTBF as an indicator to NOT have its toxic over-simplification seep through the rest of reliability, availability and maintainability decision-making. Which is why we are VERY CONCERNED WHEN ANY ORGANIZATION USES IT! What’s the answer? Start with understanding what decision you are trying to make. What you are trying to improve. What the value of that improvement is. And then truly understand HOW your system will likely fail (the ‘vital few’). Study and understand those ‘vital few’ and what makes them happen. Before you try and characterize them with a number, try and remove the ‘root causes’ that allow them to happen. Quickly. And once you know your ‘vital few’ and have exhausted all the ‘fast, simple and cheap’ corrective actions that will improve reliability, THEN characterize the likelihood of failure over time (which needs more than the MTBF). And keep going! 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 The post SOR 1024 MTBF and an Indicator appeared first on Accendo Reliability.

What Counts Abstract Carl and Fred discuss a listener question about what type of field or test issues to count when assessing or estimating reliability in a project. Key Points Join Carl and Fred as they discuss how to collect and maintain field and test data when calculating or estimating reliability. Topics include: Do you consider only failures that occur when the product is used as specified? Or, do you also consider failures that occur during misuse of the product? What types of field returns would you not use when estimating reliability? You have to define the environmental and operating conditions. Carefully consider which potential misuses will be included in reliability estimation. Err in the direction of including unintended uses in the failure database, so that a business decision can be made on warranty or customer service. Usage environments are a distribution of data, and it is important to know the nature of the distribution. ISO standards use the term “anticipated misuse.” You need a broad application of what you keep track of in your reliability database, however this doesn’t mean you have to take action on everything in the database, Pareto still applies. Business decisions are important. Field data can be filled with noise. Learn how to differentiate signal from noise. If someone complains or returns a product for any reason, learn why, so you can make informed decisions. 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   The post SOR 1023 What Counts appeared first on Accendo Reliability.

Facilitator and Deep Understanding Abstract Carl and Fred discuss  an Inside FMEA reader question: “does a facilitator have to have a deep understanding of the subject matter they are facilitating?” Key Points Join Carl and Fred as they discuss the level of knowledge a facilitator must have about there subject being facilitated, in order to be successful. Topics include: What type of knowledge is helpful to the facilitator? It is essential that the facilitator have excellent facilitation skills. Having no knowledge at all of the subject being facilitated does not work. It is not necessary for a facilitator to have deep or expert knowledge of the subject matter. The laser is in between these extremes. The best answer to the question being posed is that the facilitator should have sufficient overview of the subject, so he or she does not impede the meetings (team members feel like they have to”educate” the facilitator) and can guide the team to good thinking and results. Avoid “expert” facilitators who know nothing about the subject being facilitated. Minimum is to know the scope, language, and a high-level overview of the topic. This might take a few hours of immersion. Avoid having the subject matter expert (who is unskilled in facilitation) being the team facilitator, because the team needs good facilitation to get to its best thinking. The skills of facilitation are covered in the series called “FMEA Facilitation Series,” which are part of Inside FMEA. A link is in the show notes. Example facilitation errors are discussed, along with comments on how to address. 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 To read the “FMEA Facilitation Series” use this link: https://accendoreliability.com/inside-fmea-index-articles/ and cursor down the the facilitation series of articles. The post SOR 1022 Facilitator and Deep Understanding appeared first on Accendo Reliability.

Influence vs Facilitation Abstract Dianna and Fred discuss influence vs. facilitation and the difficulty of trying to do both at once. Key Points Join Dianna and Fred as they discuss influence vs. facilitation, comparing the roles of when you are a contributor vs. facilitating with peers. Topics include: The need to be a facilitator when in quality engineering or reliability engineering The challenges of stepping out of the facilitator role to join the discussion as an expert Tricks to facilitating, including planning ahead and making ideas visible Home/school club, chalkboards, project management 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 Reliability engineers and quality engineers often find themselves needing to facilitate a meeting. Root cause analysis, continuous improvement, and other scenarios require teamwork. A challenge can be playing the facilitator role while you also want to be a contributor. These roles can be at odds with one another. Facilitators guard the process and ensure everyone is heard. Contributors have ideas and opinions to share with the team that help define the solution. When you must facilitate, there are ways to shift from one role to another. Fred and Dianna talk about several ways to make the shift. Facilitating itself is difficult and requires skill. Some suggestions they have: Plan ahead Define the scope well Know how decisions will be made Follow up with actions One of the biggest takeaways: make it visible to everyone. Quality tools are examples of models and templates that that work. Whether you facilitate in-person or are using remote tools, be sure you understand how to use the tools. Don’t let your misunderstanding about how to use tools create disruptive pauses in the process. In conclusion, be cautious about the roles you play, and make it clear to the team which role you’re playing when. And you can enhance your career if you practice your facilitator skills. Do you have any success stories to share? The post SOR 1021 Influence vs Facilitation appeared first on Accendo Reliability.

Delve into the world of structured problem solving with the 8 Disciplines method as Dianna, Fred, and their AI guest, G, tackle the nuances of root cause analysis. Discover the complexities of troubleshooting issues, like malfunctioning dishwashers, and how manufacturers can adapt to consumer needs. Explore the benefits of gamification in reliability engineering and the pivotal role of AI in fostering collaboration. Join the hosts as they share insights that promise to enhance understanding and motivation within the field.

Can Manufacturing Improve the Design Abstract Chris and Fred discuss how reliability and quality is destroyed by organizations that like to have a ‘razor’ split between design and manufacturing teams. Why? Key Points Join Chris and Fred as they discuss when organizations see design and manufacturing functions as distinct, separate, never to talk to each other, and completely unaware of the other (this is a bad thing by the way …) Topics include: Around 80 % of quality problems start with design. That’s right. Most of those ‘manufacturing’ defects come about when the design teams come up with ideas that can work … but simply can’t be built with the machines in your manufacturing facility. Whether this is being metal at crazy angles, tolerances that need to be within one-millionth of one-millionth of one inch otherwise it catches fire, heat sensitive material that is next to welds and so on. Manufacturing teams can only make designs ‘worse.’ Of the 20 % of defects that aren’t rooted in crazy designs, the only thing that happens is that quality and reliability is reduced from what the design team were hoping. But all the (other team) does is tell us what they can’t do. That usually means they are responding to your crazy design/manufacturing process which assumes the other team can accommodate it. Instead … the teams need to speak to each other before they design and build to know what the other CAN do. And then work accordingly, so you have no conversations where they have to tell you what they CAN’T do. Do you have a team that re-designs things to make them manufacturable? Then we are talking about you. Designers are not special geniuses that need no boundaries so they can innovate. They need to be real world people. 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 The post SOR 1019 Can Manufacturing Improve the Design appeared first on Accendo Reliability.

Calculate Equipment Reliability Abstract Chris and Fred discuss how we can go about calculating equipment reliability … when you only have a small amount of information. Help! Key Points Join Chris and Fred as they discuss how you can calculate equipment reliability when you have a little bit of information. This comes from a listener who asked us to calculate the reliability of their equipment that failed four times in one month (with 400 hours of operation).  How do we find this system’s reliability? Topics include: So what is the number? If we assume a constant hazard rate (yuck) then we can use the exponential distribution to work out that the reliability at one month (400 hours) is 1.8 %. Is this helpful? Our listener didn’t tell us why they wanted a reliability number … but 1.8 % is almost certainly useless in terms of making better decisions. Why? Well we don’t know if our equipment is wearing in or wearing out. We don’t know if we have 10 pieces of equipment working at the same time over this month, with only 4 of them failing. So what do we do? What is the DECISION? This is a common question (refrain). What are you deciding to do with this number? We can’t think of a single decision that this 1.8 % estimate will help. Again, we don’t know if the equipment is wearing in or wearing out … which would affect our estimate. Knowing the precise times of failure would be really helpful as well. But is the decision more useful if it is based on availability? It sounds like the equipment is being repaired, so how long does it spend being repaired? What is the DECISION! Don’t just stick with numbers … look for WHY? Are you doing root cause analysis (RCA)? If you can (for example) quickly identify that the four failures were caused by incorrect startup procedures, and a quick change to those procedures would make the problems go away … fix it! Stop doing statistics on numbers you can make go away. 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 The post SOR 1018 Calculate Equipment Reliability appeared first on Accendo Reliability.

Influence – How to Get It & How to Keep It! Abstract Greg and Fred discuss how to influence decision makers to get your ideas adopted and deployed. Key Points Join Greg and Fred as they discuss how to get your reliability and quality objectives  adopted into a project. Influencing topics include: What are the critical constraints in a project? How to get your reliability objective or goal adopted by the program or project manager? How to develop KPI’s or metrics to ensure your objective can be measured? How to manage and measure achievement of your quality objective throughout the project’s lifecycle. 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   The post SOR 1017 Influence appeared first on Accendo Reliability.