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| In this
issue: |
Issue
46, December 2004 |
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Reliability HotWire is a service of ReliaSoft Corporation
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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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