Importance of Field DataCustomers experience product failures. Understanding these failures that occur in the hands of customers is an essential undertaking. We need this information to identify increasing failure rates, component batch or assembly errors, or design mistakes. Continue reading
Complications When Tracking Field Data
Fielded products fail day by day. Customers report these failures, generally seeking a way to remedy this issue. Gathering the reported or returned products or confirmed failures is common practice.
Depending on the product, a simple replacement or exchange may suffice. For other products, repair or a refund may be appropriate. In general, and not always, when a product fails in the hands of a customer, the organization designing, manufacturing, and distributing the product learns of the failure. Continue reading
Ideally, in every design of every component the stress–strength relationship looks like this figure:
You will notice that the stress is well below the strength. This implies there is very little chance of failure as a result of the element being overstressed. Also, ideally, we fully characterize all stresses and all strengths for each element of a product. This is generally difficult to accomplish and it is rarely done to that extent. Continue reading
Modeling Complex Systems and Their VariabilityThe Monte Carlo approach relies on data that describe the variation of elements within the system. It also connects the elements such that the result is an estimate of performance. For reliability modeling this is easiest to imagine for a series system. Continue reading
Fault tree analysis (FTA) is a technique used to explore the many potential or actual causes of product or system failure. It is best applied when there are many possible ways for something may fail. For example, when my car doesn’t start, it could be a dead battery, a faulty starter, a loose wire, an absence of fuel, and on and on. Continue reading