Why Reliability? Reliability has several definitions, mostly covering some likelihood expression of functionality under certain conditions and a given timeframe. And designers and manufacturers often put significant effort into preventing failure. But this begs the question of “why?” The answer is that reliability is a potential benefit to the user and, through sales and profit, to the supplier. Benefits come in the form of safety, of the product confidently delivering its intent, and of lowered operating costs. However, there are also potential downsides, of a higher up-front cost, changed aesthetics, less performance, etc. And, sales may be driven by these more visible attributes. Hence, benefits to the supplier of maybe increased investment (to deliver assured high reliability) might …
reliability
Wind Turbine Reliability Improvement Trends
Commercial grade wind turbines generally have a target design life of 20 years. This goal is frequently elusive with key components like the gearbox often showing much shorter life in service. Continuous condition monitoring and motion control are technologies which are beginning to improve the reliability of wind turbines. Condition monitoring can reduce downtime by advance warning of the problem and in some cases making simpler repairs as opposed to full replacement. There are many ways for advanced monitoring and control technologies to improve the reliability of wind turbines. For more details, see the article at: http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&doc_id=254889&cid=Newsletter+-+Automation%2FControl&dfpPParams=ind_182,aid_254889&dfpLayout=blog …
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BUSINESS – OPERATIONAL ASSESSMENT
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 …
Initial Design Concept Selection and Optimization
Starting with a low cost/low complexity design alternatives in large engineering programs and then systematically raising the cost and complexity , where warranted, is a far better approach than starting with higher cost design complex designs and later doing cost down and simplification activities. I have worked on many product teams where the latter was the norm. Subsystem teams would select costly more complex technologies, more costly high precision components and assemblies, costly manufacturing and control systems, all in an effort to get a jump start on functional performance and time to market requirements. Early demonstration of performance, even though the costs were over allocations, were considered perfectly fine, as long as everyone tacitly understood that there …
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Measure Twice, at Least
How often have you cut a board, a piece of material, or even wrapping paper, and guess what? You come up Short Agh! We'll there may be a few factors in not effectively measuring the material. It can be any of the following: 1) Your measurement system or rule is not accurate enough for the material you measuring. 2) You need to measure in Milimeters and not inches. 3) You don't have repeatable measurements, and have too much variance in your system. If number 3 is the case for repeatability, we would suggest a Gage R&R study, and an Ops Ala Carte Consultant can help you here. Per the 2nd cause, in my recent experience with a Supplier Quality Issue, the manufacturing tech. measured a hi-tech German Cable for medical applications, and found that a couple of pigtail lengths wire …
