Jan
23
2012 Lunch and Learn Series
January 23, 2012 | Leave a Comment
Quarterly Event
Once a quarter, we will hold a topical event in the area of product realization. The next event is on Feb 16 entitled "New Product Introduction – Launching Success!"
Please Contact Ops A La Carte for More Information
Jan
23
MD&M West
January 23, 2012 | Leave a Comment
February 16, 2012, Anaheim, CA
On Feb 16, we will be giving a one day seminar called "Medical Device Reliability Testing".
Register at: MD&M
For more info, please
Jan
23
Gaining Control over Cost and Quality in Global Manufacturing
January 23, 2012 | Leave a Comment
FREE Seminar: Gaining Control over Cost and Quality in Global Manufacturing: State of the Art Approaches from Design to Sourcing to Production
February 7 – 8:30am – 1pm
Speakers: Mike Silverman of Ops A La Carte, Duane Lowenstein of Agilent, Nader Fathi of Camstar, Jason Ruppert of Harmonic
Agilent Technologies
5301 Stevens Creek Blvd.
Santa Clara, California 95051
Global competition is accelerating the pace of innovation and development of complex electronics systems, while forcing down price to consumers. Product life cycles are shrinking, shortening the time required for new products to ramp to volume production, while trying to ensure highest quality to avoid brand erosion. As Brand Owners look to reduce manufacturing costs and focus on core competencies, outsourcing (be it domestic or offshore) all or part of manufacturing has become an imperative.
New challenges are in play for many Brand Owners: Retaining control of product quality which has often been “transferred” to the contract manufacturer. To retain control, leading manufacturers are taking a holistic view of their manufacturing supply chain and turning to cloud computing technologies to ensure real-time multi-tier supply chain visibility while fostering an ongoing collaboration with suppliers.
In this seminar, experts will address global manufacturing strategies that have proven results improving product quality while reducing costs. The speakers will share best practices from industry leaders who have successfully implemented collaborative, state-of-the-art solutions with their suppliers and contract manufacturers and achieved results in cost and quality.
8:30 AM – 9:15 AM: Registration/Breakfast/Introductions
9:15 AM – 9:45 AM: Using Design for Reliability to Reduce Product Life Cycle Costs – Mike Silverman, Managing Partner, Senior Reliability Consultant, Ops A La Carte
9:45 AM – 10:15 AM: The Economics of Diagnostics and Repair in Development, Production, and Support – Duane Lowenstein, Business Development Manager, Agilent Technologies
10:15 AM – 10:30 AM: Break
10:30 AM – 11:00 AM: A Holistic View of Quality – Nader Fathi, General Manager, Supply Chain Quality, Camstar
11:00 AM – 11:45 AM: The Necessity of Real-Time Product Quality Visibility in an outsourced High Mix/Low Volume Mfg Operation , Harmonic
11:45 AM – 1:00 PM: Lunch and Follow-Up Discussion
Jan
19
Design for Reliability Workshop
January 19, 2012 | Leave a Comment
Be Analytic in association with Ops A La Carte, AeSI Alumni Association and the Aeronautical Society of India presents “Workshop on Design for Reliability”.
January 30 – 31, 2012 in Bangalore
February 3 – 4, 2012 in Pune
In this seminar we will teach you the proper techniques to achieving Design for Reliability (DfR). We will take you through the four key phases of the product life cycle and how to integrate reliability within each phase.
Step 1: Concept Phase
Step 2: Design Phase
Step 3: Prototype Phase
Step 4: Manufacturing Phase
Reliability is no longer a separate activity performed by a distinct group within the organization. Product reliability goals, concerns and activities are integrated into nearly every function and process of an organization.. Each organization must factor reliability into every decision in order to ensure production of a successful product. The old Test-Analyze-and-Fix philosophies no longer have a place in today’s design process due to continuous cost reduction pressures and reduced design cycles.
Visit Be Analytic for more information.
Jan
12
Reliability, Maintainability, and Availability Symposium (RAMS)
January 12, 2012 | Leave a Comment
January 23-26, Reno, Nevada
Ops A La Carte will be exhibiting and presenting the following six papers and tutorials at this event.
“The Useful Synergies between Prognostics and HALT and HASS”, by Ops A La Carte and RidgeTop Group
“What Is DfR and What it Is Not”, by Andre Kleyner and Mike Silverman
“Effective Reliability Program Traits” Tutorial, by Fred Schenkelberg
“Establishing Effective ORT Requirements”, by Fred Schenkelberg
“Investment In Reliability Program Versus Return – How To Decide”, by Fred Schenkelberg
“How To Select The Right Accelerated Life Test Approach”, by Fred Schenkelberg
Visit RAMS for more information.
Jan
12
Certified Reliability Engineer (CRE) Preparation Course
January 12, 2012 | Leave a Comment
Jan 17 – Feb 28, 2012
6pm-10pm one night a week for 7 weeks
Becoming certified as a Reliability Engineer (CRE) can be valuable to your employer and your career. John Cooper of Ops A La Carte is conducting this Exam Preparation Course. Students have found it very valuable in preparing for the exam. Even if you are not planning on taking the exam but need a good, in-depth course in Reliability Engineering, this can benefit you substantially.
The course is $1295. We offer 25% discount via webinar or for those who are unemployed and for students not getting reimbursed.
Location: San Jose, CA
Special new options:
Offered via webinar for out of town students.
Tutoring over the internet is now available.
Offered on-site for companies with 8 or more students (we did a class for NASA in Sept ’11).
Visit the CRE Course by Ops A La Carte for more information or to register.
Jan
6
Mandarin Translation of “50 Ways” Reliability Book
January 6, 2012 | Leave a Comment
"How Reliable Is Your Product: 50 Ways to Improve Product Reliability" just celebrated its 1 year anniversary of being published.
We are pleased to announce the Mandarin translation of the book.
You can view the 1st 3 Chapters at 50 Ways to Improve Reliability – in Mandarin, or 提高产品可靠性的50种方法. It will be available in ebook January, 2012.
Jan
3
HALT Calculator Now on the Cloud.
January 3, 2012 | Leave a Comment
We are pleased to announce that our HALT Calculator is now available as a cloud-based application so you can access it direclty whenever you need. We also have a Paypal payment system in place on-line for quicker access.
With the cloud application, we are also offering either pay by use (you can order as many use credits as you’d like) or yearly subscriptions. The yearly subscriptions work great when you have your own chamber or when you perform many HALTs a year and you would like to run the calculator during HALT planning to set must meet criteria, or when you are in the middle of the test and trying to determine which failures to fix and continue testing.
Now Chart is offering our HALT Calculator as on option when they sell a chamber.
Here is the internet version of our HALT Calculator.
Dec
17
Certified Reliability Engineer (CRE) Preparation Course
December 17, 2011 | Leave a Comment
Certified Reliability Engineer (CRE) Preparation Course
Jan 17 – Feb 28, 2012 — 6pm-10pm one night a week, 7 weeks
Course Instructor John Cooper, Ops A La Carte
Length: 7 weeks
Cost: $1295. We offer 25% discount for those taking via webinar or for unemployed or for students not getting reimbursed.
Location: San Jose, CA
Offered via webinar for out of town students.
Becoming certified as a Reliability Engineer (CRE) can be valuable to your employer and your career. We are offering this Exam Preparation Course. Students have found it very valuable in preparing for the exam. Even if you are not planning on taking the exam but need a good, in-depth course in Reliability Engineering, this can benefit you substantially.
Course Webpage: CRE Course by Ops A La Carte
Dec
1
Reliability of Repairable Systems vs. Non-Repairable Systems
December 1, 2011 | Leave a Comment
When performing various reliability tasks, non-repairable systems or products are treated differently from repairable systems or products. Some of the tools that are used for one type are not applicable to the other. Obviously, at some level, repairable systems are composed of non-repairable parts. Examples of non-repairable systems would be “one-shot” devices like light bulbs or more complex devices like pacemakers. Examples of repairable systems are computers, automobiles, and airplanes.
What is unique about repairable systems? Availability becomes a key measure of importance. In simple terms, availability is the percentage of time that the product or system is able to perform its required functions. When the required functions cannot be performed because a failure has occurred, the system must be repaired to restore the functionality. This is where another measure, maintainability, impacts the system availability. The faster the system can be repaired, the greater the availability to the customer. For systems that require high reliability or availability, redundancy can improve the design. However, repairable systems will benefit significantly more than non-repairable systems when using redundancy.
Common metrics used in measuring system types are shown in the table below.
|
METRIC |
NON-REPAIRABLE |
REPAIRABLE |
| Time to Failure | MTTF Time to First FailureHazard Rate | MTBF Time to First FailureROCOF/Failure Rate |
| Probability | Reliability | Availability(Reliability) |
| Maintainability | N/A | Maintainability Downtime |
| Warranty | Product replacement within warranty period | Part/product replacement within warranty period |
The table below compares some additional areas of non-repairable systems and repairable systems.
|
NON-REPAIRABLE |
REPAIRABLE |
| Discarded (recycled?) upon failure | Restored to operating conditions without replacing entire system |
| Lifetime is random variable described by single time to failure | Lifetime is age of system or total hours of operation |
| Group of systems – lifetime assumed independent & identically distributed (from same population) | Random variables of interest are times between failure and number of failures at particular age. |
| Failure rate is hazard rate of a lifetime distribution – a property of time to failure | Failure rate is rate of occurrence of failures (ROCOF) – a property of a sequence of failure times |
Reliability modeling is usually more complex for repairable systems. Often, methods like Markov models (chains) is required to adequately model repairable systems as opposed to simple series block diagram methods for non-repairable systems.
In the area of monitoring or analysis, the following table compares methods for both types of systems.
|
METHOD |
NON-REPARIABLE |
REPAIRABLE |
| Weibull | Useful method (single failure modes only) | Not used at system level |
| Reliability Growth - Duane
- AMSAA |
Usually not used | Used during development testing |
| Mean Cumulative Function (MCF) | Usually not used | Useful method (non-parametric) |
| Event Series (Point Processes) | HPP (For random, constant average rate events) | NHPP (Parametric method) – complex |
It is important to understand the type of system being designed and use the appropriate reliability methods and tools to match that system. This may require some research but it’s important to use the correct methods so as not to have misleading results.
What has been your experience in doing analysis of repairable systems compared to non-repairable systems?
Subscribe through Feedburner
