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Book Reviews for Mike's book "50 Way Ways to Improve Product Reliability"

Clifton A. Ericson II, Editor of the Journal of System Safety writes

"When was the last time you read an engineering book that you couldn’t put down, or that didn’t put you down (to sleep)? With How Reliable is Your Product?, author Mike Silverman has delivered what few manage to achieve… a book on Reliability engineering that is useful, practical and interesting. In addition, Mike has nicely woven into the material just enough humor to keep the book out of the usual stuffy engineering category.

The one thing that irks me about other Reliability texts is that after a brief introduction on reliability they all typically launch immediately into detailed mathematics and equations for distributions, probability theory and Weibull analysis. Few texts actually tell you what you what you need to do in order to design, develop, produce and maintain a reliable product. This book is a down to earth, understandable text covering the information relevant to Reliability engineers and managers. Not only is it a “how to” manual, it is also a “what to do” manual.

This book describes what is needed to implement a successful reliability program. A sample of the fifty topics covered include: Reliability Program Plan, ALT, HALT, FRACAS, metrics, warranty, and prediction methods. One very helpful feature of this book is that for all fifty reliability topics covered, a real life case study is provided that shows how the approach has benefited actual organizations. The book is nicely organized according to the phases of a projects development: product concept, design, prototyping and manufacturing. Each of these phases requires different reliability tasks, as Mike explains.

Reliability engineering is more than a check-box in a program mangers schedule. Reliability must be acknowledged up front and built into the product from its very conception. Reliability, in other words, must be ‘designed-in” into the product. Mike has condensed his 25 years of experience and expertise into this book, which shows the reader how to effectively apply Design for Reliability (DFR) tasks.

In summary, this book provides an excellent overview on all of the relevant aspects of Reliability engineering. I highly recommend this book, and it should be required reading for anyone in the Reliability or System Safety discipline, as well as anyone just wanting to know more on the subject. I have to confess that I learned more about Reliability from this single book than I have from the other nine books I own on Reliability. If you want to produce a world-class, high reliability product then this book is for you.

Richard Nass of MDDI’s DeviceTalk Blog at mddionline.com writes:

"It’s not often that I do book reviews. However, a book crossed my desk that has some extra appeal. Written by Mike Silverman, the book is called “How Reliable is Your Product?” The reason this book caught my attention was the familiar name associated with it. I’m involved in the MD&M East event (June 6-9 in New York City) and one of the classes I’ve penciled into my calendar is called Medical Device Reliability Testing, presented by none other than Mike Silverman.

Back to the book: a lot of the space at MD+DI is spent on reliability issues. If you’re not really careful throughout the entire design process (emphasis on “entire”), the results can be disastrous. Staying on track to develop a reliable product needn’t be a process that completely derails your design either. The book takes the reader through 50 steps that a product designer (design team, management team, etc.) should follow in order to maintain focus with a reliable product.

In Mike’s words, reliability must be part of the design process itself, not something that you keep coming back to periodically. Throughout his 25-year career, Mike has focused on reliability and has seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. Hence, that gives him the needed perspective to guide designers.

If you’ve started on the path toward a new medical device, it might behoove you to invest in this book."

Dan Beaulieu of PCB News writes

"Mike Silverman is a consultant and business owner. He is also the founder and managing partner of Ops A La Carte, "a reliability engineering consultancy." And, yes, if you care about the reliability of your products, services and processes, you've come to the right place.

This guy knows it all.

After reading Silverman's new book How Reliable Is Your Product? 50 Ways to Improve Product Reliability, you come away with a feeling that anything he doesn't know about reliability is not worth knowing. This handbook offers a complete overview of all facets of product reliability, including developing the specifically right metrics for your products to developing your own reliability plan to thermal analysis to having the most effective corrective action system (CAR).

This is a very comprehensive volume--a book that you keep at your side, on your desk close at hand rather than up on your shelf.

What I like about this book is the way that Silverman is able to take a pretty serious and, face it, dry discipline and bring it to life with real-world examples we can understand. His clear and interesting way of explaining sometimes difficult subjects reminds me of the late Carl Sagan.

Here are a couple of examples: In the chapter on how to design your own experiments, he uses the example of baking cookies. He designs an experiment for, yes, baking a batch of cookies that even any non-technical person can understand.

In another chapter, this one on warranties, Silverman spends a lot of time describing the various types of product warranties, as well as teaching the reader how to specifically design warranty methodologies for particular products.

In this same chapter, Silverman goes into just how much a product warranty will costs in the long run...and, most importantly, how to calculate that cost.

I think that many professionals in our industry will find the section of the book that deals with manufacturing very informative--particularly those that deal with vendor assessment and outsourcing versus in-house designing and manufacturing. Silverman describes in detail the pros and cons of outsourcing.

If one can say that a book on any subject is definitive then certainly this book is the definitive volume on product reliability. Frankly, I just don't understand how anyone who has anything to do with manufacturing can get by without having this book on his or her desk."

ECN Magazine and SMT Magazine write "Mike's book unlocks secrets to optimizing product reliability"

New book, "How Reliable Is Your Product? 50 Ways to Improve Product Reliability" by Mike Silverman, founder and managing partner at Ops A La Carte, provides hands on teaching principals, case studies and facts to help companies optimize the reliability of their products.

“I wrote the book with the core belief that engineers need practical experience and basic education about reliability, rather than volumes of theories and formulas,” said Silverman. “We compiled data from our work with more than 500 companies spanning 100 different industries to find the best practices and most efficient and effective ways to design or manufacture any product and optimize it to withstand the most critical testing.”

“Mike takes you on a guided tour of Design for Reliability techniques, which are interwoven with many fascinating and useful case studies that demonstrate how this approach has already benefited many organizations. He has gifted you with the tools to help make your great products better,” states Mark Turner, CRP, Six Sigma and DFSS Black Belt, Director of Reliability, Enecsys.

“The book presents practical examples of what an engineer should and shouldn’t do to be successful in developing a reliable product. It is a must read for all engineers and managers who are involved with corporate-wide improvement efforts,” states James McLinn, CRE, Fellow ASQ, Manager of Reliability, Beckman-Coulter.

This unique book covers examples from a number of core industries including aerospace, defense, clean technology, consumer electronics, medical, networking, oil and gas, semiconductor equipment, and telecommunications. It describes a number of situations and presents practical examples of what a reliability engineer should do to be successful. These 50 Ways are organized according to the phases of a project and a maturity matrix is presented as a means to measure progress. The many examples show proactive use of reliability tools for hardware and software. All are accompanied by concise case studies showing how to apply tools and handle common situations. It is a must read for all engineers and managers who are involved with corporate wide improvement efforts.

Mike Silverman brings a unique perspective with more than 25 years experience in reliability engineering, management and training. He owns a reliability consulting firm Ops A La Carte and a reliability test lab HALT and HASS Labs.

- March 22, 2011

"How Reliable Is Your Product" Book Signing Meetup Event

We held our book signing party and gave away free signed books. During this session, Mike covered: 

- Practical guide to improving your product reliability
- Case studies/examples of companies and industries that are leaders in reliability
- Pitfalls to avoid when developing new products
- How to optimize reliability, maximize profits, and delight your customers

- March 22, 2011

Ops is Interviewed by Bill Marlow

Ops A La Carte's Mike Silverman was interviewed by Bill Marlow of the Bill Marlow Show. Look for it at http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=84836&cmd=tc. Listen to the podcast at Book_Interview

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- December 1, 2010

Ops is Interviewed by SMT Magazine

Ops A La Carte's Mike Silverman was interviewed by Marcy LaRont of i-Connect007, part of SMT Magazine. The title of the article is "Electronics Reliability and Product Development." Look for it at http://www.ems007.com/pages/zone.cgi?a=73025.

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