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The origins of a reliability engineer
The origins of a reliability engineer may go back to Royal Engineers disposing of unexploded bombs. These Royal Engineers mastered their craft at mitigating risk, recognition of patterns, and iterating their skill-set. Similar to Reliability Engineers in manufacturing, there needs to be a skill set fully dedicated to similar situations.
Apr 142 min read
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Applying my first lesson from Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge failure
The FBI has recently opened a criminal investigation on the container ship that brought down Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge in...
Apr 16, 20243 min read
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Zugzwang moments within performance goals
Performance goals Performance goal season is wrapping up. With a few days remaining, you summarize your annual performance to each goal...
Dec 29, 20232 min read
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Idioms for when both options are bad.
A decade ago, I vividly remember facing a dilemma where neither option was good. A department I was responsible for had a basement with...
Dec 5, 20233 min read
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Understanding the prerequisite to a failure
A quote I remember a mentor of mine said years ago was, if you find yourself bored, just wait 5 more minutes, something will blow up. Of...
Nov 27, 20225 min read
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Looking back, I guess it was a sightless turn
I was talking to a friend lately about the melancholy moments in a professional career that became influential turns when looking back....
Oct 30, 20224 min read
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Cheers... to the last outage.
WIthin all forms of manufacturing, outages exist. They are either planned or unplanned and they could exist at some periodic interval....
May 17, 20225 min read
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When Does Your Analysis Reach a Point of Diminishing Return?
We all fall on both sides of the fence when solving problems. We are either on the receiving end of problems to solve or we are the...
Feb 6, 20224 min read
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Rethink our view towards single-points-of-failure.
The new James Webb Space Telescope claims to have 344 single-points-of-failure (SPOF) or single components that could disrupt the...
Feb 1, 20224 min read
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Using algorithms for spares management. Easy, right?
Academic references exist for inventory optimization to reflect current reliability and current market conditions. Within manufacturing,...
Jan 3, 20222 min read
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Standing Out by Embracing Your Business Failings? Absolutely.
It is always something to admire when people own their mistakes or missed attempts or utter flops. In the manufacturing industry, I find...
Dec 7, 20212 min read
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Reflections on the Use of the Word "Failure": I blame Manufacturing.
Maybe I’ve spent too much time in manufacturing because “failure” is one of my default words. I have tried to incorporate fiasco,...
Dec 7, 20211 min read
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How I figured out that reflecting on failures made for good business.
Seth Godin calls it “shipping.” Having the courage to reflect, write, and ship. It is taking time to build the habit to do good things...
Dec 7, 20212 min read
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