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Fred

Basics of Reliability Engineering

One of best features about working in reliability engineering is everything fails,eventually. This fact provides a bit of career stability.

Another aspect I enjoy is the concepts and approaches that create the foundation forreliability engineering knowledge do not change very much over time. The basics ofreliability engineering are the same as when the earliest engineers began designstructures and products.

What is Reliability Engineering?

I define reliability engineering as the discipline to optimize system or productdependability in a cost effective manner.

We use tools, techniques, and knowledge to accomplish answers to twofundamential engineering questions.

1. What will fail?

2. When will it fail?

Reliability engineering includes design, manufacture, transport, installation, operation, maintenance, and retirementof systems and products. We work with design and manufacturing teams primarily, yet also work closely withprocurement, suppliers, marketing, fiannce and customers.

The focus for a reliability professional is on creating a product that meets or exceeds customer expectations withrespect to reliability.

Building Block for Reliability Engineering

As with any profession, reliability engineers have a body of knowledge that in part defines the profession. We have acommon language with other engineering disciplies since work so closely with them. Yet, we bring a unique specificconcepts to the table.

One set of tools (building blocks) we rely on is in the determination of what will fail.

Risk assessment includes applying our knowledge of failure mechansims to identify weakesses in a particular designwhen exposed to the use environment. Specific tools include failure mode and effect analysis, discovery evaluations,environmental and stress testing.

We work to understand failure mechanisms well enough to find engineering solutions (root cause anlaysis) plus tomodel and predict future failures (physics of failure modeling).

Our knowledge of failures permits us to assist the entire team to recognize likely failures and minimize their existanceor mitgate thier effect.

Another set of tools include the resolution of when something will fail. Obvious this relies to a large extent on knowwhat will fail.

The modeling tools of reliabilit block diagram, physics of failure, field data analysis and others provide means toestimate the future failure rate for a specfic product.

The experimental and laboratory skills of environmental, stress, and life testing permit focus on specific failuremechansisms and evidence to support predictive modeling. I like to say “we break things” as a description of this partof our profession.

It is the mix of analytical and emperical approaches that permit us to learn and create suitably reliable products.

People skills are necessary

One more building block for sucessful reliability engineers is the ability to influence others.

We rarely work alone and rarely have the postion to impose our recommendations. We support design andmanufacturing teams and have to enable those engineers to make good decisions.

Having a solide grasp of the basic tools of relaiblity engineering is essential, and not sufficient.

Knowing how to work with other engineers, what drives them to make decisions, what they need to make a fullyinformated decision and what motivates them all play a part in gaining influence.

Much of this we learned early in our life.

As engineers, providing the technical information is often not enough. We have to provide the information at the righttime, to the right people in the right format. This changes with each group and encounter.

Learning to understand those we work with is possible to learn.

Building credibility based on your technical skills with the range of relaiblity tools is a great start. Gaining trustprovides a means to engage in further dicussion around reliability.

Obtaining influence is one result and may require regular attention and improvement.

Summary

The reliabilit engineering body of knowledge has basic concepts around understanding failure mechanisms andinterpersonal influence. The specific knowledge required to be successful involves many fields of science andengineering with emphasis on those topics related to your system or product.

The basics of reliability engineering involve some concepts that are easy to master. It involved some tools that allowyou to determine what and when something will fail. And, a basic element of reliability engineering involves workingwell with others.