RE: Creating a Reliability Department
3) Reliability in manufacturing would not constitute a conflict of interest as compliance could. Compliance is more like an unbiased judge where Reliability provides input to improve products to make them more robust. I respectfully disagree with Paul. While I'm sure there are some reliability functions that are effective working in engineering or manufacturing (i.e. that management really understands the importance and makes it a priority), I believe it's the exception not the rule. The reliability function generally should report to an organization independent of manufacturing and engineering. This ensures honesty in decion making by making sure all viewpoints are really considered and can be taken all the way to the CEO if the issue is important enough and won't be stifled by an executive who really has a different agenda. Or stopping a part that's being pushed through the ECO process before Reliability has their time to evaluate the part. We all know the game...If you have reliability buried in manufacturing such as the quality organization usually is, input from RQ are usually overriden because management in mfg is evaluated on quantity and not quality/reliability of design. Evaluating on Quality is usually nothing more than lip service and bad news will get filtered up. Reliability is no different than how most compliance organizations should be set up, IMO. Matthew Kilkenny Reliability Engineer -Original Message- From: Darrell Locke [mailto:dlo...@advanced-input.com] Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2002 10:44 AM To: emc-p...@majordomo.ieee.org Subject: FW: Creating a Reliability Department Forwarding for Paul Darrell Locke -Original Message- From: Paul Paroff Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2002 7:44 AM To: Darrell Locke Subject: RE: Creating a Reliability Department 1) From the Manufacturing side I would study warranty and other returns, customer complaints, and field service and repairs. So you may need a database to organize and the means to collect the data. From there I would find the top 5 to 10 most frequent and most expensive problems and work with both Development and Manufacturing to improve materials, designs and manufacturing techniques. The contribution to the bottom line can be tracked through lower warranty expense and fewer service calls. An increase in customer satisfaction is likely to occur over time which will likely result in more sales and increased customer loyalty but it's hard to connect the effort in reliability with such soft numbers. (Besides, Sales will take the credit.) 2) Start with one person as you outlined, but they will need support in gathering and processing data. A second step could be to add a reliability engineer on the development side who would work on proving the reliability of new designs. This function would get early prototypes and see what breaks or wears out first under different use models and environments. You could then add a technician or two as the work load warrants. Good luck, Paul Paroff Reliability Engineer. -Original Message- From: marti...@appliedbiosystems.com [mailto:marti...@appliedbiosystems.com] Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2002 1:16 PM To: emc-p...@majordomo.ieee.org Subject: Creating a Reliability Department I have been given a consulting opportunity to develop a plan for a Reliability Department for a fairly large manufacturing company of Laboratory Equipment. Since my background is in compliance I could use some advice on how to get started. 1. The goal is to hire one permanent employee and grow over time. What are some justifications/success stories/strategies for having a Reliability Department? 2. Assuming the goal is to have the best reliability department in the world, how do we get started? What are the stages which should be followed for developing a Reliability Group? What would staffing requirements look like for each phase? 3. The goal is to have this position report to Manufacturing Engineering. From a compliance standpoint, this would be a conflict of interest. Does the same hold true for Reliability Engineering? 4. This department may include a global function. What is the best method to integrate this department globally? All responses are greatly appreciated Regards Joe Martin EMC/Product Safety Engineer --- This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list. Visit our web site at: http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/emcs/pstc/ To cancel your subscription, send mail to: majord...@ieee.org with the single line: unsubscribe emc-pstc For help, send mail to the list administrators: Ron Pickard: emc-p...@hypercom.com Dave Heald: davehe...@mediaone.net For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: ri...@ieee.org Jim Bacher: j.bac...@ieee.org All emc-pstc postings are archived
FW: Creating a Reliability Department
Forwarding for Paul Darrell Locke -Original Message- From: Paul Paroff Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2002 7:44 AM To: Darrell Locke Subject: RE: Creating a Reliability Department 1) From the Manufacturing side I would study warranty and other returns, customer complaints, and field service and repairs. So you may need a database to organize and the means to collect the data. From there I would find the top 5 to 10 most frequent and most expensive problems and work with both Development and Manufacturing to improve materials, designs and manufacturing techniques. The contribution to the bottom line can be tracked through lower warranty expense and fewer service calls. An increase in customer satisfaction is likely to occur over time which will likely result in more sales and increased customer loyalty but it's hard to connect the effort in reliability with such soft numbers. (Besides, Sales will take the credit.) 2) Start with one person as you outlined, but they will need support in gathering and processing data. A second step could be to add a reliability engineer on the development side who would work on proving the reliability of new designs. This function would get early prototypes and see what breaks or wears out first under different use models and environments. You could then add a technician or two as the work load warrants. 3) Reliability in manufacturing would not constitute a conflict of interest as compliance could. Compliance is more like an unbiased judge where Reliability provides input to improve products to make them more robust. Good luck, Paul Paroff Reliability Engineer. -Original Message- From: marti...@appliedbiosystems.com [mailto:marti...@appliedbiosystems.com] Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2002 1:16 PM To: emc-p...@majordomo.ieee.org Subject: Creating a Reliability Department I have been given a consulting opportunity to develop a plan for a Reliability Department for a fairly large manufacturing company of Laboratory Equipment. Since my background is in compliance I could use some advice on how to get started. 1. The goal is to hire one permanent employee and grow over time. What are some justifications/success stories/strategies for having a Reliability Department? 2. Assuming the goal is to have the best reliability department in the world, how do we get started? What are the stages which should be followed for developing a Reliability Group? What would staffing requirements look like for each phase? 3. The goal is to have this position report to Manufacturing Engineering. From a compliance standpoint, this would be a conflict of interest. Does the same hold true for Reliability Engineering? 4. This department may include a global function. What is the best method to integrate this department globally? All responses are greatly appreciated Regards Joe Martin EMC/Product Safety Engineer --- This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list. Visit our web site at: http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/emcs/pstc/ To cancel your subscription, send mail to: majord...@ieee.org with the single line: unsubscribe emc-pstc For help, send mail to the list administrators: Ron Pickard: emc-p...@hypercom.com Dave Heald: davehe...@mediaone.net For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: ri...@ieee.org Jim Bacher: j.bac...@ieee.org All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://ieeepstc.mindcruiser.com/ Click on browse and then emc-pstc mailing list --- This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list. Visit our web site at: http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/emcs/pstc/ To cancel your subscription, send mail to: majord...@ieee.org with the single line: unsubscribe emc-pstc For help, send mail to the list administrators: Ron Pickard: emc-p...@hypercom.com Dave Heald: davehe...@mediaone.net For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: ri...@ieee.org Jim Bacher: j.bac...@ieee.org All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://ieeepstc.mindcruiser.com/ Click on browse and then emc-pstc mailing list
Re: Creating a Reliability Department
I have been given a consulting opportunity to develop a plan for a Reliability Department for a fairly large manufacturing company of Laboratory Equipment. Since my background is in compliance I could use some advice on how to get started. 1. The goal is to hire one permanent employee and grow over time. What are some justifications/success stories/strategies for having a Reliability Department? Any part or device that's mission critical (for lack of a better phrase) needs reliability. There are wide range of functions that reliability engineers perform, so it's necessary to define exactly what it is this reliability person will be doing. Someone in aeronautical reliability will have a vastly different job function than say someone in an integrated circuit mfr-ing environment. Someone who's a reliability engineer could have their whole career in the hard-drive industry and yet some other reliability engineer could have their whole career in the automotive industry. 2. Assuming the goal is to have the best reliability department in the world, how do we get started? Define exactly what it is that is required of these people. In other words, if all the customer requires are calculated MTBFs, that's easy. Internally, the reliability engineer should be constantly comparing calculated failure rates with actual demonstrated failure rates from the field. From either the calculated failures or the actual demonstrated failures, the reliability engineer is the one to *advise* how often things will perform for the given requirement and how often things should be inspected, replaced, or maintained. It can be a huge job, or it can be made very simple. What are the stages which should be followed for developing a Reliability Group? What would staffing requirements look like for each phase? First, a widely experienced person to define what it is required of the Reliability department, what inputs will be used and/or monitored, what tools and standards are needed to be used or followed, how the data is to be massaged, and to whom the results are to be presented. Then the staffing moves into (depending upon what this company is and how big) people who are able to do failure calculations, glean out demonstrated failures in the field from Customer Service, and who can do testing in a lab. 3. The goal is to have this position report to Manufacturing Engineering. From a compliance standpoint, this would be a conflict of interest. Does the same hold true for Reliability Engineering? Yes. Ultimately, reliability should be part of say Quality. And Quality should be a department seperate from engineering and mfr-ing. Some here may shudder at the thought but that's just my opinion. 4. This department may include a global function. What is the best method to integrate this department globally? Refine the way customer service reports and returns from the field are done. - Doug McKean --- This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list. Visit our web site at: http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/emcs/pstc/ To cancel your subscription, send mail to: majord...@ieee.org with the single line: unsubscribe emc-pstc For help, send mail to the list administrators: Ron Pickard: emc-p...@hypercom.com Dave Heald: davehe...@mediaone.net For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: ri...@ieee.org Jim Bacher: j.bac...@ieee.org All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://ieeepstc.mindcruiser.com/ Click on browse and then emc-pstc mailing list
RE: Creating a Reliability Department
From: marti...@appliedbiosystems.com [mailto:marti...@appliedbiosystems.com] Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2002 4:16 PM To: emc-p...@majordomo.ieee.org 1. The goal is to hire one permanent employee and grow over time. What are some justifications/success stories/strategies for having a Reliability Department? 2. Assuming the goal is to have the best reliability department in the world, how do we get started? What are the stages which should be followed for developing a Reliability Group? What would staffing requirements look like for each phase? Profesional Reliability Engineering is a wing of the American Society for Quality (ASQ). This link http://www.asq-rd.org/ is a place to start. 3. The goal is to have this position report to Manufacturing Engineering. From a compliance standpoint, this would be a conflict of interest. Does the same hold true for Reliability Engineering? Bad move. Just as with Compliance the reliability function needs independence and needs to be involved at the front end of the developement process. If you are worrying about it with in the Manufacturing environment it's too late. 4. This department may include a global function. What is the best method to integrate this department globally? Since reliability engineering is a specialization within quality being part of the corporate quality group is a good place. Dave Clement Motorola Inc. Global Homologation Engineering / Test Lab Services 20 Cabot Blvd. Mansfield, MA 02048 P:508-851-8259 F:508-851-8512 C:508-725-9689 mailto:dave.clem...@motorola.com --- This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list. Visit our web site at: http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/emcs/pstc/ To cancel your subscription, send mail to: majord...@ieee.org with the single line: unsubscribe emc-pstc For help, send mail to the list administrators: Ron Pickard: emc-p...@hypercom.com Dave Heald: davehe...@mediaone.net For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: ri...@ieee.org Jim Bacher: j.bac...@ieee.org All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://ieeepstc.mindcruiser.com/ Click on browse and then emc-pstc mailing list
Creating a Reliability Department
I have been given a consulting opportunity to develop a plan for a Reliability Department for a fairly large manufacturing company of Laboratory Equipment. Since my background is in compliance I could use some advice on how to get started. 1. The goal is to hire one permanent employee and grow over time. What are some justifications/success stories/strategies for having a Reliability Department? 2. Assuming the goal is to have the best reliability department in the world, how do we get started? What are the stages which should be followed for developing a Reliability Group? What would staffing requirements look like for each phase? 3. The goal is to have this position report to Manufacturing Engineering. From a compliance standpoint, this would be a conflict of interest. Does the same hold true for Reliability Engineering? 4. This department may include a global function. What is the best method to integrate this department globally? All responses are greatly appreciated Regards Joe Martin EMC/Product Safety Engineer --- This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list. Visit our web site at: http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/emcs/pstc/ To cancel your subscription, send mail to: majord...@ieee.org with the single line: unsubscribe emc-pstc For help, send mail to the list administrators: Ron Pickard: emc-p...@hypercom.com Dave Heald: davehe...@mediaone.net For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: ri...@ieee.org Jim Bacher: j.bac...@ieee.org All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://ieeepstc.mindcruiser.com/ Click on browse and then emc-pstc mailing list
