Accendo Weekly Update #478 December 29, 2024
Course via Accendo Reliability
Time to plan what to learn next year
The Course page on Accendo Reliability lists the various offerings for your structured, i.e., a course or professional development.
Take a look, enroll, and learn.
Announcements & Reminders
It appears the holiday break is taking hold, and when this newsletter is published today, I expect many out-of-office messages. Enjoy the break, relax, and refresh. For those still working - apply what you've learned this year.
Stay safe, stay flexible, and stay resilient.
Cheers,
Fred
PS: Up to here, is just a repeat from last week, as I'm also taking a break, of sorts. See you all in the new year.
Reliability.FM
The Reliability Engineering podcast network
Podcasts continue to gain listeners, so thanks for letting others know. Let us know what you'd like to talk about. Now, with over 3,329,928 downloads. Thanks for listening! Tell a friend about the network.
SOR 1029 Thermal HALT
Kirk and Fred discuss a paper Kirk wrote about how thermal HALT can be a tool for finding marginal signal integrity issues. [Listen here...]
SOR 1030 Starting a Consultancy
Dianna and Fred dive into the realities of starting a consultancy. [Listen here...]
QDD 159 Celebrating a Year of Insights
Celebrating a year of insights and community growth, this episode reflects on key moments, popular episodes, and the future direction of the Quality During Design podcast. [Listen here...]
RM158: The New Kids in Town - The Cast of the D-Code Podcast
Today, I’m excited to introduce the hosts of the D-Code podcast, a dynamic trio of young professionals making waves in the electronics manufacturing industry. With experience rooted in contract manufacturing and stencil fabrication for electronic assemblies, they bring a fresh perspective to the table. [Listen here...]
Fundamentals of Ongoing Reliability Testing
Recorded 10 December 2024 / Fred Schenkelberg
Ongoing Reliability Testing (ORT) is a class of product testing that aims to identify potential field reliability issues after product launch and before customers experience failures. Typically, done using a rotation of samples directly from production and using expected use conditions/stresses, the testing balances many factors to be of value.
Let’s explore the range of considerations when designing an ORT to optimize the ORT’s ability to identify field problems efficiently. We will also discuss the various tradeoffs that impact sample size, the use of accelerating stresses, and more. [Listen here...]
Fundamentals of Early Field Results
Recorded 12 November 2024 / Fred Schenkelberg
At least one group called this the ‘Delta Phase.’ It is the period shortly after launching a product and provides a unique opportunity to reduce future field failures and improve customer satisfaction dramatically. The idea is to aggressively identify and resolve any field issues identified by your customers.
Let’s explore the concept of a delta phase and how to implement it in your organization. Plus, let’s examine a few situations that make significant short and long-term reductions in the field failure rate. [Listen here...]
Reliability Live Events
Reliability Engineering webinars and master classes
Join the discussion at the next live event
Alternatives to a Long ALT
Scheduled for January 14, 2025, at 9 am US Pacific time.
Speaker: Fred Schenkelberg
Life testing a product or component, at times, involves months and months of testing. Even accelerated life testing can take a long time, given the limitation on our ability to cause the proper acceleration for meaningful results. So, what is one to do if waiting 3 months for test results is unacceptable?
Let’s explore a few alternatives along with the pros and cons. We examine using our knowledge and the knowledge of others to streamline the testing or avoid it altogether. We also need to consider why we need to estimate life in the first place. Sometimes, estimating the life of something is not all that useful or valuable.
What is the Lognormal Distribution and How Does it Help Me
Scheduled for January 28, 2025, at 8 am US Pacific time.
Speaker: Chris Jackson
We like to think that we make decisions based on the information we have available to us. We don’t. We instead make decisions based on emotions. And the most dominant emotion we rely upon when making a decision is confidence. You can have all the information in the world, but if you don’t understand it, don’t trust it, or otherwise don’t believe in it, then you won’t have the confidence to make the right decision. And we often try and generate ‘false’ confidence by having lots of clauses in contracts, schedule lots of tests, and demand people comply with standards. But the confidence these things create is a façade that quickly gets broken down when our products don’t meet our expectations. Want to understand the only way you should be generating confidence when it comes to reliability engineering? Join us for this webinar!
Reliability Articles
Reliability Engineering essays and tutorials
Short essays and tutorials for your weekly professional reading. Did you know there are over 3,500 articles published to date? Comment or ask questions thus joining the discussion. If you have an idea for an article or would like to contribute articles, let's talk
Facilitation & Collaboration: 10 Proven Tips For Asking Great Questions
“I can’t believe you asked him if he married a trophy wife,” my colleague stated. “Even more, I can’t believe he answered it without getting mad. Or that he told you so much about his first marriage and himself.”
“Well, the key was that I kept the questions short and followed where he took the conversation,” I replied. ...[Read more…]
We Need to Try Harder to Avoid MTBF
Just back from the Reliability and Maintainability Symposium and not happy. While there are signs, a proudly worn button, regular mentions of progress and support, we still talk about reliability using MTBF too often. We need to avoid MTBF actively, no, I mean aggressively.
Let’s get the message out there concerning the folly of using MTBF as a surrogate to discuss reliability. ...[Read more…]
HALT or ALT ? Is it Only One Letter Differences?
HALT (Highly Accelerated Life Testing) is the foundation for the definition of HASS (Highly Accelerated Stress Screening) and HASA (Highly Accelerated Stress Audit).
HALT is primarily used to expose weaknesses in the design of a product by subjecting it to extreme environmental conditions such as temperature, vibration, and humidity... [Read more…]
Electric Grid Risks
When the electricity grid fails, there is a risk of cascading impacts from what might seem to be a relatively minor event.
Having just watched a Electric Power video on this very topic, I feel obligated to inform the masses, what would happen if the power grid shut down?
If the power grid goes down, water and natural gas will also likely fail at some point, so planning is critical. Without a plan in place, most of us would be in bad shape with an extended grid outage. ...[Read more…]
How to Use SOPs to Achieve Zero Failure Operations
To get world class operation and profits your Asset Lifecycle Management System must prevent every opportunity for defect-creation in all life cycle phases, for all your operating equipment
Every physical asset has a lifecycle starting at conception through to its eventual disposal and site remediation. In each phase of the lifecycle errors can occur that cause defects within the asset. ...[Read more…]
Defining Your RCM Analysis Scope to Achieve the Results You Need
Join me, Nancy Regan, as I guide you through the process of effectively defining the scope of your Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) analysis to ensure you achieve your desired analysis goals. In this video, I’ll illustrate the importance of tailoring the RCM analysis scope using a practical example of a Plant Air system. ...[Watch here…]
Hypothesis Testing Part-2: One Sample t-test, t-distribution, Degrees of Freedom and P-Value
Dear friends, we are happy to release this second video on Hypothesis Testing! In this video, Hemant Urdhwareshe explains One Sample t-test along with illustrations of Student’s t-distribution. Hemant has also explained the concept of degrees of freedom and p-value. We recommend viewers to watch Hypothesis Testing, Part-1 video before this video. ...[Watch here…]
If you would like to contribute an article or series of articles on reliability, maintenance, or related topics, let's talk. The intent is to have many voices writing here. If you're interested in publishing your work via Accendo Reliability, let's talk. fms@accendoreliability.com
Consultant
6dThanks Fred, Keep up the good work . Happy New Year 2025.