THEME: Why do this? An abbreviated view of how to do it A recent article in Bloomberg/Business Week (Dec 10-16, 2012) interview by Josh Tyrangiel of Apple's CEO Tim Cook noted a key point in business practice/philosophy: "There are always things unknowable - if we are finding zero issues, our performance bar is in the wrong place" WHY THINK THIS WAY? You need to improve - it must be a way of business performance in all areas People, knowkedge, & technology/information There is a need to understand your business performance attitude (Change it or Perish) HOW? (An abbreviated view) Understand Value Analysis Identify your Competitive Advantage (Quality, Availability, Flexibility, Cost) Tool to employ (System Audit) Practice Need a champion/advocate Establish measurements Use …
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Robust Design and Reliability Activities
Robust Design & Reliability I delivered a webinar recently to describe the differences and similarities between robust design (RD) activities and reliability engineering (RE) activities in hardware product development . A survey we took from several hundred attendees indicated a diversity of opinions. About half the participants indicated they did not differentiate at all between the two methodologies. Approximately 20 % indicated they did differentiate between the two methodologies, and about 30% indicated that they did not know. I was quite surprised at the result, especially since participants came from working quality engineers, reliability engineers, engineering directors, system engineers, etc. Somewhere along the way, the differences and similarities …
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Harry & Sally and the Bathtub
The other day I was thinking about my Reliability Blog and it led to my thinking about CURVES, especially those most common in Reliability Engineering. We regularly use the Gaussian function and the Weibull Chart, but as far as my experience goes, the Bathtub Curve has been the most popular way to visually summarize the lifetime expectations of just about everything. Then, looking at the curve I could not avoid noting that it uses words most common in personal daily life: Infant Mortality, Useful Life and End of Life, and that stimulated thought on life at the beginning, middle and end. Then Rob Reiner’s 1989 Movie, “When Harry met Sally” popped into my head, not only as a way of getting your attention, but because anyone who saw the movie can undoubtedly recall “that” scene where Sally …
