“Keeping the end in mind”, “working toward a common objective” and “providing a vision” are all convention management wisdom based on setting goals.
Seeing a reliability goal is one of the first tasks when creating a reliability plan.
“How good (reliable) does it have to be?” Continue reading
The communication between suppliers or vendors and their customers is often using 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
It was late Friday afternoon and the phone rang. Which is rarely a good thing.
There seems to a significant spike in field failures due to one component. The initial failure analysis work reveals the issue started with a batch of parts received about two months ago and the flaw continues to appear in subsequent batches. 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, “The main cause of production-induced unreliability, as well as rework and scrap, is the variability inherent in production processes.” O’Connor, Patrick D. T. and Andre Kleyner. 2012. Practical Reliability Engineering. Chicester: John Wiley and Sons. Web. Continue reading
Suppliers often include reliability information along with performance specifications.
We look for reliability statements as one part of the selection process to ascertain if the component is likely to have sufficient reliability.
When the vendor’s data is clearly stated and meaningful, that information saves us from potentially having to conduct our own reliability evaluations. Continue reading