Reliability Engineering Principles

Reliability Engineering Principles (REP) is a 3-day basic training course for engineers. REP covers the fundamentals of reliability. The course is long on practical problem solving and short on statistical calculations (we use software for the statistics). The course shows how improving reliability boosts business performance by reducing the high cost of unreliability. The reliability tools are used for finding cost issues rather than simply functioning as technical marvels.

Students solve problems during the class to reinforce the lectures (a hand held electronic engineering calculator is required for use by each student). Subjects discussed in the course are generally connected to money issues for finding affordable levels of reliability by use of reliability tools such as (more details on the reliability tools are available):

Mean time between failures indices TPM and reliability principles Preparing reliability data for analysis Corrective action for Weibull failure Models & Monte Carlo simulations Pareto distributions for vital problems Fault tree analysis Design review Load/strength interactions Software reliability tools Sudden death and simultaneous testing Reliability growth models and displays Reliability policies and specifications Reliability audits Bathtub curves for modes of failure

Effectiveness: availability, reliability, maintainability, and capability Weibull, normal, & log-normal probability plots Decision trees merging reliability and costs Critical items significantly affecting safety/costs Failure mode effect analysis Quality function deployment Mechanical components testing for interactions Electronic device screening and de-rating Reliability testing strategies Accelerated testing Failure recording, analysis, and corrective action Contracting for reliability Management's role in reliability improvements

REP course is 2-3/4 days in length--4 days if English skills need a little sharpening. The REP training course also has a Management Overview requiring 1-1/2 hours for educating managers in the principles studied by their engineers. The agenda for the 2-3/4 day course is:

Day 1-- Introductions and General Information Setting The Stage For Reliability Reliability Data Problems and Deficiencies Computer demonstration of probability plots Demonstration Project Introduced Homework-Evening-Problems 1-8 Day 2-- Review of Day 1 Homework Reliability Models Computer demonstration of Monte Carlo models Management Systems For Reliability Mechanical Components And Systems Reliability Electronic System Reliability Demonstration Project Preliminary Commitment Homework + Self Assessment Audit-Evening-Problems 9+

Day 3-- Review of Day 2 Homework Software Reliability Reliability Testing Reliability Growth Monitoring Computer demonstration of Crow/AMSAA plots Reliability Management Demonstration Project Commitment Questions, Comments, And Feedback Seminar Evaluation Management Overview (if required--1.5 hrs duration) The class commences at 8:00 AM and ends at 5:00 PM with 45 minutes for lunch. A ten minute break occurs in the morning and one in the afternoon. Each demonstration project must provide a cost reduction of at least US$4,000 as the minimum goal.

 The REP course usually requires a one additional day of follow-up class concentrating on the demonstration projects. The follow-up class is a coaching effort conducted 6-8 weeks after the 3-day training. The students use the elapsed time for solving practical problems. Coaching is usually required on demonstrations projects selected by the students to show they have mastered the skills of using reliability tools for solving cost problems. This one-day follow-up class concerning the demonstration project is a coaching and tutoring effort to help the students across small problems delaying action on important cost issues.

Who should attend the Reliability Engineering Principles training class?

Production supervisors will find new tools in reliability engineering principles for understanding how operations can improve reliability of their processes. They will learn how to influence improvements in availability, how they can assist in reducing process failures, and how they can calculate the cost of unreliability for making business decisions to attack problems of unreliability.

Engineering personnel will find new modeling techniques for predicting equipment reliability based on how equipment is installed, operated, and maintained to assist them in making life cycle cost decisions in justifying new equipment and new processes.

Maintenance engineers will find reliability tools helpful for providing supporting evidence during root cause analysis failure investigations. They will find reliability tools and techniques helpful for understanding failure data in their CMSS systems, and they will see how to make business decisions, based on the failure data, to justify making equipment more reliable.

Managers will find business aspects of reliability engineering principles helpful for measuring and motivating improvements in processes, procedures, people, and equipment to reduce the cost of unreliability through use of non-traditional tools as they ferret-out hidden factories wasting time and money. They will learn how to predict future failures as a selling point for improvement projects.

The REP class usually precedes the Life Cycle Cost training class to familiarize students with failure rates and failure modes needed for the cost models.

Refer to price lists for information about training costs. Check the schedule for available times. Download a copy of a short Reliability Engineering Principles brochure as a (41K) PDF file—if you need a PDF reader, download the free Adobe software.

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Last revised 11/20/2007