There are two basic philosophies when creating a reliability plan for a new product or system.
One is to experiment with prototypes as quickly and often as possible, the build, test, fix, approach. Or, you can research and model detailed aspects of the materials and structures to characterize the strength of a product or system, the analytical approach. Continue reading
Some days are better than others. We sometimes run into failure when working to create a new product. With a little investigation we suspect the components are not working as expected. Continue reading
Every failure provides information. It provides time to failure, stress strength relationship, process stability and design margin types of information. In every case. Even failures directly related to human error.
A hardware intermittent failure observed by a firmware engineer should not be dismissed. Rather recorded, explored and examined. Continue reading
Reliability engineering has value. It can improve product reliability, increase uptime, and drive customer satisfaction, for example.
Here are a couple of stories based on real situations that resulted in significant value for the organization.
A telecommunications test device company created a low volume very expensive test system. Continue reading
Roll the dice.
It is about that simple if any one product will survive to a specific time. Every product has a chance, not a guarantee. The time to failure for each product is a function of the use, stresses, assembly, latent defects or imperfections, and many other variables. Continue reading