LISP-STAT: An Object-Oriented Environment for Statistical Computing and Dynamic Graphics (original) (raw)

Reliability Engineering – a key to engineering excellence

A change in focus has over the past decade seen South African maintenance and reliability expertise disappear to a large extent. This is inter alia due to a misunderstanding of the value and purpose of reliability engineering. It is often seen as an unwanted expense rather than the essential contributor to engineering excellence that it is. It is not as visible as an aesthetically or technically appealing design. "Designer arrogance" often further obstructs logic thinking associated with reliability engineering resulting in an appealing, but less than optimum design. What is often overlooked is that, although reliability engineering does seemingly entail "unwanted cost", the cost is essential and significantly lower than the cost of non-implementation. Pressures for higher availability have fuelled an increased focus towards maintenance in an effort to improve the availability of systems. However, it is not always realized that traditional maintenance is a reactive and cost intensive way to try and ensure this availability. As reliability engineering entails the identification and planning of activities to ensure that equipment will perform in a predictable manner when you need it for as long as you need it, it includes more than maintenance and forms one of the two key elements of availability, the other being maintainability, and not maintenance per se.

Reliability Engineering: a demonstration of how reliability engineering techniques and methods processes, products and services

2015

Understanding what, when and where to use the wide variety of reliability engineering tools available helps in achieving the highest reliability in products, processes and services. This paper outlines the value of using Weibull Analysis, Reliability Block Diagrams Reliability Centered Maintenance and Root Cause Analysis and as techniques for processes, products, equipment and services improvement. Reliability Engineering tools help to determine the relationship between the process and the equipment. A demonstration of where and how the reliability engineering techniques can be applied is shown in the research. Every product and process design and their development are unique such that meticulous planning is required to map the reliability tasks to the identified constraints. A product with complex multidisciplinary integrated functions requires efficient reliability tools. These tools are required to be used to assess built-in safety and reliability features of the product under an applicable environment. The techniques discussed in this research will help in determining the present and future reliability of the products or processes.

Reliability engineering and system safety

Reliability Engineering & System Safety, 1988

Reliability Engineering and System Safety is an international journal devoted to the development and application of methods for the enhancement of the safety and reliability of complex technological systems, like nuclear power plants, chemical plants, hazardous waste facilities and space systems. An important aim is to achieve a balance between academic material and practical applications. The following topics are within the scope of the journal:

Reliability specifications in engineering design: A survey

1985

This paper presents an extensive up-to-date list of selective literature on reliability specifications for the design and development of engineering systems. INTRODUCTION: Reliability design specification forms an integral part of the design process right from the beginning of the design stages to ensure good operation and maintenance of the equipment. A clear and adequate reliability design

Methodology for physics and engineering of reliable products

Wescon/96, 1996

Physics of failure approaches have gained wide spread acceptance by most within tile Electronic Rcdiability Community. These methodologies involve identifying root cause failure mechanisms, developing associated models, and utilizing these models to improve time to market, lower development and build costs and higher reliability. The methodology outlined herein sets forth a process, based on integration of both physics and engineering principles, for achieving the same goals. 1" he proposed methodology is consistent with a "pure" physics of failure methodology, but it has ttle distinct advantage of not being "dead-in-the-water" if failure physics models do not exist. It also goes a long way to overcoming the age old axiom that "typically the things that fail are not the things that were analyzed, evaluated, etc. but rather the things that were assumed to not to be a problem". It outlines a methodology for integrating all available data, at various data cluality levels, to make the best possible decisions, l"he key components are: 1) existing physics and engineering models, 2) utilizing a problen]/failure reporting system and other data sources to identify "tall poles" and t}leir root cause for current designs and process and 3) new technology evaluations based on failure physics assessments.

Incorporation of Reliability Management in the Design Process

2005

This paper describes a life cycle product reliability management process to facilitate decisions made during the design process. Furthermore it shows the necessity of the incorporation of reliability management in the design process while developing a new design that can achieve the expected lifetime with high quality and less failures. The reliability management process contains qualitative and quantitative reliability methods based on warranty data, test data, condition monitoring and engineering judgement which will be fused to a closed loop failure analysis system. Qualitative reliability methods such as the Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) help to identify the critical components in the early stages of product conceptualization and design. The critical components of the system will be analyzed more detailed over their lifetime using different quantitative methods. Concluding, all lessons learned throughout the reliability management process will be placed in the analysis tools used in product development.