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| In this issue: |
Issue 46, December 2004 |
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Reliability HotWire is a service
of ReliaSoft Corporation
To subscribe or update your e-mail preferences, go to
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Happy Holidays!
From all of us at ReliaSoft... we wish you a joyous
holiday season and a new year of peace and
happiness.
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Hot Topics |
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Using Weibull++
and BlockSim to Calculate t0
A question that was posted on ReliaSoft's
Discussion Forum asks
whether ReliaSoft's Weibull++ software can calculate t0 for a data
set provided in an article by another author and use the analysis to
calculate a variety of results, including the optimum replacement time. This
article presents ReliaSoft's response.
To read more, see
http://www.weibull.com/hotwire/issue46/hottopics46.htm
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Reliability Basics |
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Basic Concepts of
FMEA and FMECA
Failure Mode and
Effects Analysis (FMEA) and Failure Modes, Effects and Criticality Analysis
(FMECA) are methodologies designed to identify potential failure modes for a
product or process, to assess the risk associated with those failure modes,
to rank the issues in terms of importance and to identify and carry out
corrective actions to address the most serious concerns.
Although the purpose, terminology and other
details can vary according to type (e.g. Process FMEA, Design FMEA,
etc.), the basic methodology is similar for all. This article presents a
brief general overview of FMEA / FMECA analysis techniques and requirements.
To read more, see
http://www.weibull.com/hotwire/issue46/relbasics46.htm
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Tool Tips |
-
What is the
difference between cumulative and instantaneous MTBF?
-
In regards to life data analysis,
what type of analysis can be done when all of the data is suspended?
To read more, see
http://www.weibull.com/hotwire/issue46/tooltips46.htm
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Hot News |
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RAMS 2005
ReliaSoft Corporation proudly announces its Diamond Level
Sponsorship of the 51th Annual Reliability and Maintainability
Symposium (RAMS), to be held January 24-27, 2005 at the Hilton
Alexandria Mark Center in Alexandria, Virginia. Our esteemed
scientists will be presenting technical papers during this event
while also making themselves available for one-on-one interactions
at our booth in the exhibitor area. Friendly interactions with old
acquaintances and new make this event a pleasure each year. We hope
to see you there! For detailed information on the symposium, please
visit http://www.rams.org. |
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Deere &
Company - John Deere continued to demonstrate its total
commitment to reliability engineering practices by recently becoming
an official ReliaSoft Global Corporate Partner. This agreement
provides all John Deere employees, around the world, with full
unlimited access to all stand-alone products offered by ReliaSoft.
Welcome aboard, John Deere! Learn more about ReliaSoft's Corporate
Partner License option at:
http://www.ReliaSoft.com/license.htm#partner. |
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2005 Applied
Reliability Symposium - The ARS Editorial Review Board
has made its official selections from a distinguished group of
presentation proposals. It was a very difficult process of selection
this year, as we received many excellent topics. Letters of
gratitude will be sent shortly to each and every person who so
kindly took time from their busy schedules to participate. We will
also be posting the selected presentation overviews at
http://www.ARSymposium.org/. |
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Prediction
Software by ReliaSoft ReliaSoft's soon-to-be-released
standards based reliability prediction software, Lambda Predict,
will include MIL-HDBK-217, Bellcore (Telcordia), RDF 2000 and China
299B for the analysis of electronics and related components plus
NSWC-98/LE1 for mechanical components. The software will also ship
with an extensive collection of pre-defined component libraries. For
more information on Lambda Predict, please visit
http://Predict.ReliaSoft.com/. |
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New Editions
from Dr. Wayne Nelson It has been brought to our
attention that Dr. Wayne Nelson has published new paperback editions
of the following reliability engineering classics!
Applied Life Data Analysis
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471644625.html
Accelerated Testing: Statistical Models, Test Plans, and Data
Analyses
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471697362.html
These new editions include reliability engineering fundamentals and
updated descriptions of modern software packages for various data
types. We strongly recommend these reference publications, for we
frequently refer to them ourselves here at ReliaSoft. To view
additional recommended reading, please visit:
http://www.ReliaSoft.com/books/index.html. |
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Holiday Hours
- Please note that our Corporate Headquarters in the U.S
will be closed on Dec. 24th, 2004 and Dec. 31st, 2004. We wish you
all a Happy Holiday Season! |
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Public Training
Event Calendar
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From the Edge |
In addition to the
monthly Reliability HotWire, ReliaSoft publishes
Reliability Edge,
a printed journal that includes articles and information related to the
field of reliability engineering. Articles of interest in the current
edition:
- Before launching a new product, the
manufacturer is always faced with decisions regarding the optimum method
to estimate the reliability of the product or service. Accelerated
testing (with accelerated time or accelerated stress) might be the
recommended or required approach. Conducting a quantitative accelerated
life test (QALT) requires the determination or development of an
appropriate life-stress relationship model. Moreover, a test plan needs
to be developed to obtain appropriate and sufficient information in
order to accurately estimate reliability performance at operating
conditions, significantly reduce test times and costs and achieve other
objectives. Nelson (1990), Meeker and Escobar (1998) and Nelson (2003)
provide a substantial review of the literature on how to develop optimum
QALT plans. Such plans are becoming very popular and are starting to be
used in engineering, materials science and manufacturing industries.
However, the rate of increase of this popularity has been slow due to
the limited tools available at this time for designing optimum
accelerated life testing plans.
With the upcoming addition of a new utility, ReliaSoft's ALTA will be
the only software package capable of analyzing, modeling, planning and
evaluating a quantitative accelerated life test. This article
demonstrates the use of ALTA's new accelerated life test planning module
to investigate the procedure for designing QALT plans and applies the
techniques to develop an example test plan for MOS capacitors. To view
the entire article see:
http://www.ReliaSoft.com/newsletter/v5i1/accelerated.htm.
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Contribute to HotWire |
Contributions Welcomed
As always, your feedback and contributions are appreciated.
ReliaSoft is able to provide the most user-friendly reliability software
packages and support because we listen to our customers. This applies to
our newsletters and publications as well. We welcome any suggestions or
contributions you may have for Reliability HotWire. If you have a
topic or article that you think would be useful to the readers of
Reliability HotWire, feel free to contact us. We can be reached by
e-mail at HotWire@ReliaSoft.com,
or by standard mail at 1450 S. Eastside Loop, Tucson, AZ 85710-6703,
USA.
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Copyright 2004
ReliaSoft Corporation, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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