#406 – ACCENDO RELIABILITY AND WRITING – FRED SCHENKELBERG

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While I’m not much of a New Year’s Resolution guy, I guess I’ve set a resolution. I need to restart writing weekly articles for Accendo Reliability.

The thing is, I struggle to write. Plenty of other interests and tasks keep me away from the keyboard. Yet, as I explained to a few new authors how writing and posting on Accendo Reliability is a good thing, I realized I have been putting off hitting the keyboard again. Continue reading

#404 – PRODUCT RELIABILITY AND CUSTOMER SERVICE – FRED SCHENKELBERG

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After 30 minutes of being on hold, I wasn’t sure what to expect from customer service for a product reliability issue. The scratchy soundtrack didn’t foretell a great experience either.

Once connected to a company representative, we resolved the issue quickly and satisfactorily. Unfortunately, that was a pleasant surprise. All too often, the frequently repeated “Your call is important to us.” (an Amazon affiliate link) just isn’t true, in my experience. Continue reading

#402 – INTRODUCTION TO THE 6 SIGMA DESIGN APPROACH – FRED SCHENKELBERG

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Sigma, σ, is the Greek character we use to represent standard deviation. 6 σ represents the spread of data about the mean. For data with a normal distribution 6 σ includes 99.7% of the data.

The 6 σ design approach incorporates knowledge of the variation that will occur within the design such that the design has is unlikely to fail. Continue reading

#401 – WHEN MANAGEMENT DOESN’T LISTEN – FRED SCHENKELBERG

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A Bloomberg articles details the Takata airbag recall series of events. The line that caught my attention is:

…company documents suggesting that Takata executives discounted concerns from their own employees and hid the potential danger…

“Sixty Million Car Bombs: Inside Takata’s Airbag Crisis”, Susan Berfield, et.al. Bloomberg Business Week, posted June 2nd, 2016, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-06-02/sixty-million-car-bombs-inside-takata-s-air-bag-crisis Continue reading

#400 – ASKING QUESTIONS IS RELIABILITY ENGINEERING – FRED SCHENKELBERG

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Finding solutions is reliability engineering too.

Have you noticed that finding solutions often requires just the right question, the proper framing of the issue, the query that reveals the problem and solution?

One of the best ways to lead a team and provide a focus on reliability performance is to ask the right questions. Continue reading