Product &
Process
Improvement

Yes, I'm certified as a Reliability Engineer. I've taught the basics to 1000+ engineers. I have applied all the tools myself for over 25 years... and I can make nice powerpoint slides and Weibull plots with the best of them!

BUT THAT IS BORING AND INADEQUATE!

When you have a ton of experience, and you start thinking about the real goal, you realize that it requires a combination of rigorous approaches and unusual, practical approaches to get the best information required to do something great.

My Guiding Principles:

• If there is a low-reliability component or sub-system, get rid of it.

• Incremental Improvement is not good enough and it usually doesn't last.

• Big improvement does not have to equal big risk.

• Adding complexity & cost to address a problem is lazy & weak.

• Compromises are weak and guaranteed not to meet all requirements.

• The best Preventive Maintenance is NO preventive maintenance. Many say this is too hard... I say "too bad, we are going to do it".

• Predictive, or Condition-Based Maintenance is effective, but it is still just a way to avoid eliminating the problem.

• Subjective, random brainstorming is weak and ineffective. This is common when teams do root cause analysis and FMEA's.

• Not letting data drive understanding and decision-making, is weak and lazy.