As reliability professionals, we have a lot to do. Risks to identify, failures to analyze. Plans to draft, numbers to crunch. Meetings, writing, research, and leading fill the day.
The list of tasks that you have before you each day is impressive and daunting. So, how do you focus on what actually requires your attention and not just the tasks that get your attention? Continue reading
Yesterday had the chance to review the long list of Design for X topics. Assembly, environment, maintainability, and of course reliability, plus about a dozen other areas of focus. How is a design team to navigate all these different sets of constraints and objectives along with crafting a solution that works?
With a little creativity, you could relate every Design for X topic to reliability. Easier to assembly, fewer assembly errors leading to field failures, for example. Continue reading
At the heart of every ‘design for… something’ is an attempt to avoid uncertainty. By exerting conscious effort to consider a set of considerations or constraints, the design process attempts to avoid the downside of missing something deemed important. Or, they are attempting to include features and capabilities to enhance a product. Continue reading
An immediate purpose is to earn a living. You also may suggest the work is to improve the reliability of the product or system. Reduce downtime, reduce warranty, increase profit, etc.
That is fine for the overall purpose of reliability engineering work, yet in the day to day work, the specific task level, what is the purpose behind what we do? Continue reading
As I’ve said before, ‘Reliability occurs at the point of decision’. When an engineer selects one material type versus another, or one component versus another, or a vendor over another, those are decisions. These decision directly impact the product’s reliability performance.
Implied within each decision is a question. For example, when deciding on a vendor to provide power supplies, the underlying question is ‘which vendor should we select in this situation?’ We make decisions to resolve questions concerning optimizations, comparisons, objectives, measurements, preventions, priorities, and resources. Continue reading