Formal education (masters or Ph.D) or design/manufacturing engineering experience?
Where do you look when hiring a new reliability engineer? Do you head to U of Maryland or other university reliability program to recruit the top talent? Or, do you promote/assign from within? Where do yo find the best reliability people?
What make a good reliability engineer? Continue reading
When should you stop testing? The quick answer is to stop testing when the testing provides no value. If no one is going to review the results or use the information to make decisions, those are good signs that the testing provides no value. Of course, this may be difficult to recognize. Continue reading
What is “design for reliability” (DFR) and how would you recognize it if it was occurring? Is it possible for an individual to ”do” DFR? Is design for reliability a specific technique? Like meditation, nearly anyone can strike a pose that appears similar to someone in deep meditation, yet can you tell by observation if that person is really mediating? Probably not. The same is true for organizations or people declaring that they are doing DFR. Maybe they are—or maybe not. Continue reading
Communication between suppliers or vendors and their customers often entails a mix of specifications and requirements. Customers set requirements and suppliers offer specifications. When they match, or when a supplier component specifications meet the customer’s requirements, we have the potential for a transaction. Continue reading
If you buy more than one of an item used in your product, you will have to deal with variability. In general, the variability from part to part is minimal and expected. Occasionally, the variability is large and causes reliability problems.
According to O’Connor and Kleyner (2012, Practical Reliability Engineering, Wiley), “The main cause of production-induced unreliability, as well as rework and scrap, is the variability inherent in production processes.” Continue reading