2012 IEDEC Status of Reliability Education

Status of Reliability Education

Fred Schenkelberg
FMS Reliability, 15466 Los Gatos Blvd #109-371, Los Gatos, CA USA
E-mail: fms@fmsreliability.com

Abstract 2. University programs
Reliability is an engineering discipline that encompasses There are elements of reliability engineering in many
a broad array of tools and techniques useful for answering engineering undergraduate programs, yet there are no
durability and robustness type questions. Product degrees at the under-graduate level that I know of, in
development teams often rely on reliability engineering reliability engineering. Also, many electrical, mechanical,
professionals to guide, advise and manage reliability civil, or software engineering programs may briefly discuss
programs. Reliability is a facet in nearly every function of or mention reliability as part of the program of study;
an organization. This implies the knowledge and skills however, one can imagine that many students have shied
required for the reliability engineer is comprehensive and away from a reliability engineering focus after having taken
the knowledge breadth may have to span aspects of material the initial required probability and statistics class.
science in design constraint considerations to warranty An education in reliability engineering may include
reverse logistics. classes in materials science, design engineering, process
How do engineers become reliability professionals? engineering, maintenance engineering, finance and
What are the knowledge transfer options available to the accounting, and a dash of marketing and sales, to name just
reliability profession? How do we get started and maintain a few. An advanced degree is a great start for a career in
our knowledge? In this short paper, I summarize what’s reliability engineering and, when combined with work
available, a couple of common paths taken to become a experience in another engineering discipline, makes for a
reliability professional, and highlight the strengths and a few very strong resume.
weaknesses concerning reliability education. Note: This is The University of Maryland’s reliability program, under
my view of the state of reliability education. the aegis of the Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering
(CALCE), continues to offer advanced degrees in reliability
Keywords
engineering.
Place, reliability, education, reliability engineer
The University of Tennessee’s Maintenance and
1. Introduction Reliability Center has partnered with Monash University,
Reliability engineering is a broad endeavor. Reliability Australia’s largest university and an accredited member of
engineers typically work to either determine how long a Australia’s “Big Eight” (UT/Monash University) to offer a
product will last, or determine how the product will fail. Master’s Degree in Maintenance & Reliability Engineering
Both of these questions require the reliability engineer have as well as graduate certificates in Reliability Engineering
sufficient knowledge from design, statistics, procurement, and Maintenance Management.
manufacturing, plus marketing, field service and Other programs of note include those at Rutgers
management. Reliability engineers work across the product University, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Vanderbilt
lifecycle and across the entire organization. University, University of Arkansas and Arizona State.
Learning how to become an effective reliability engineer Additionally, the University of Arizona offers a few courses
has many options. This short paper does not intend to fully with reliability content. Internationally, one can find
catalogue all available education opportunities, rather to advanced degree programs, for example from the Indian
highlight the available formats and venues. And, there is a Institute of Technology. Most of these programs have a
plethora of options available for one interested in learning particular focus, systems or quality engineering,
about reliability. maintenance or risk management. See the Higher Education
As a profession reliability professionals publish and page at www.reliabilitycalendar.org for a short list of
share knowledge. There are technical journals, conferences advanced degree programs and contacts. [1]
and books that capture knowledge in a way we can readily
3. Journals
reference. There are seminars, local meetings, discussion
Technometrics, the IEEE Transaction on Reliability and
groups, forums, and webinars that permit us to listen to
Quality Engineering (QE) come to mind immediately for me
lectures and to discuss alternative views and options. On the
and many of you may recognize them as well. QE has
job training and mentoring play a significant role, also.
recently agreed to publish reliability papers regularly and
There are formal education options, too. Universities and
has included a small team of reliability professionals on the
colleges offer seminars, workshops, courses and full degree
editorial board. Whereas the first two journals tend to
programs related to reliability engineering.
publish technical papers that focus more on the academic
This paper will discuss and provide examples of a variety end of the scale, QE expects to publish reliability application
of options available today. Then discuss briefly what is articles.
missing and a few ideas looking toward the future.

There are many other journals. Titles like Reliability and others as a service to the reliability community or as a
Engineering & System Safety by Elsevier or Journal of part of their business strategy.
Machinery Manufacture and Reliability by Springer suggest When asked, I tend to recommend three conferences.
a reliability focus for the journal’s articles. It is safe to say Keeping in mind that many working professionals may only
there is a robust peer reviewed technical journal community. attend one conference a year, getting the most for your time
Journals are also published by professional societies, is important. Unless your needs are very specific, for
consultancies and businesses. Some of these journals rival example testing color fastness of polymers, you may find
the peer-reviewed technical journals mentioned above, and these three conferences useful to attend on an ongoing basis.
they tend to focus on the sponsoring organization’s focus. The Annual Reliability and Maintainability Symposium,
For example, the RiAC Journal is published by the in its 57th year in 2011, is a multi-track 3.5 days conference
Reliability Information Analysis Center. Another example is complete with technical papers, tutorials and vendor trade
the Journal of Reliability, Maintainability, and show. [2] The conference regularly attracts 400 or more
Supportability in Systems Engineering published by the participants, making it a great place for networking. The
RMS Partnership. Both of these journals tend to focus on paper presentations are typically 20 to 30 minutes, making it
military applications. possible to learn about a wide range of topics from many
Businesses related to reliability engineering have a few speakers. The tutorials are typically two hours long and
journals type publications available. For example, permit time to cover a lot of material. Nine professional
ReliaSoft’s Reliability Edge Newsletter and DfR Solution’s societies sponsor this conference and it is held at various
Newsletter both provide technical information and education locations in the US, once a year – IF you can only attend one
and are free to join the subscription list. conference a year, go to RAMS.
Trade journals also publish reliability articles. These tend The International Applied Reliability Symposium (ARS)
to be more introductory than the scholarly or technical is a three-day multi-track conference with hour-long
journals, yet tend to have a wider audience outside the presentations. [3] The longer format provides time for an in-
reliability profession. The article “Inverter Risk Factors: depth treatment of the topic. The speakers are generally
What to Consider Beyond MTBF Numbers” is in a recent experienced reliability professionals and tend to provide
issue of the Solar Industry trade journal. Circuits Assembly applied or tutorial type presentations. The ARS is hosted
provided me with many introductory printed circuit annually in the US, Brazil, Singapore, Amsterdam and
assembly reliability articles over the years. Bangalore. Locations vary year to year yet continue to have
Whether you want to be published or simple keep up a presence around the world.
with the reliability profession, journals provide a vibrant, The Workshop on Accelerated Stress Testing &
timely and broad spectrum of views across our industry. Reliability (ASTR) focuses on accelerated testing from
Most of the technical articles are written for an audience that Highly Accelerated Life Testing to accelerated degradation
is well versed in the discipline discussed. And the trade testing, including the equipment, techniques and
journal and newsletters tend to be more introductory and for measurement equipment necessary for successful testing. [4]
a broad range of readership. This is a three-day single track conference and tends to
include very practical topics.
4. Conferences
Capacitor and Resister Technology Symposium, now
Over the past 20 years I’ve explored many reliability
known simply as CARTS [5]; International Reliability
conferences. At times, via the www.reliabilitycalendar.org
site, I’ve attempted to maintain a calendar of all reliability Physics Symposium (IRPS) [6].
conferences and building and maintaining the site and the International Symposium for Testing and Failure
www.reliabilitycalendar.org over the past year has been Analysis (ITSFA) [7], would be the next three on my list of
educational in itself. The vast majority of conferences are recommendations. They focus on passive electronic
very focused on a particular industry or discipline and, as components, microelectronics, and failure analysis
you may already know, conferences are typically scheduled respectively. Of course, depending on your interests, the
in the spring or fall and tend not to be located at tropical industry you work in or support, and budget you may find
resorts. one or more of these options suitable for participation.
It is possible to find at least one conference every week, Conference attendance has been down for the past few
somewhere, in the world. A few years ago two conferences years mostly due to the recession. There are signs that
on prognostics with respect to product reliability started: attendance will rebound this year, as a reflection of the need
IEEE’s International Conference on Prognostics and Health for professionals to continue to learn, network and discuss
Management and Annual Conference of the Prognostics and reliability topics.
Health Management Society. The solar industry has recently 5. Books
seen a significant rise in the number of conferences To get an idea of how many books are available on the
available. topic of reliability engineering, I searched Google Books for
Most professional societies related to reliability have at reliability engineering. Two things to note from this search -
least one annual conference. Some businesses are also Google returned 615,000 results and the two books I use and
offering conferences, some have a trade journal affiliation recommend most often were on the first page.

Schenkelberg, Status of Reliability Education

Handbook of Reliability Engineering and Management 9. Online discussion groups and forums
[8], and Practical Reliability Engineering, [9] are texts that Since the start of the Internet, there have been
address most of the aspects of reliability engineering. Each newsgroups, discussion boards, email lists and forums
discusses the basic approaches to guide professionals across available for the reliability professional to stay in touch with
the product life cycle, contain brief discussions on a broad other professionals. The format is great for the occasional
range of tools and techniques and you will find both on the question, permitting possibly hundreds of professionals to
bookshelves of many reliability professionals. address. Often a reasonable response or two is available
The options for books include general-purpose books, within a day or two. Discussion boards such as the IEEE
plus many very narrowly focused texts on specific tools or Reliability Society Yahoo Group [11] or the ASQ Reliability
industries, or both. For example there are books on Failure Division Linkedin group [12] are open to any interested
Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) in a general nature, party. These forums have also attracted regular job postings
plus texts on FMEA in the automotive industry or medical as the audience is primarily working professionals.
industry. The options for reliability statistics also have a Discussions, announcements, and job postings create a fairly
very broad range, from introductory treatments for any light traffic format, yet permit the individual to tap the
engineer, to highly specialized, narrow branches of the art. collective information of the subscribers.
Like the overall book market, e-books are becoming Webinars - The combination of a teleconference with the
increasingly available, albeit at a slow pace. In a few web enabled broadcast of the slides with annotations permits
years it may be possible to carry a complete library of a disperse audience to hear a speaker and see their slides.
professional textbooks along on your favorite e-reader. Tools offered by Webex, GotoMeeting and other others
permit seminars to occur via your computer and phone.
6. Seminars Some organizations charge a fee for high quality
Small, local and personal meetings to learn about a topic webinars by noted presenters. Costs typically range from
seem to be thriving. Face to face meetings are increasingly $50 to $200 an hour. Hobbs Engineering and Paton Press are
being supplemented with a growing calendar of two examples. Other organizations offer free webinars either
teleconferences and webinars. A broad range of consultants, as a service to their customers or their members. The ASQ
vendors, laboratories, consortiums, and professional Reliability Division is offering monthly webinars in English
societies provide reliability training via seminars. These can and Mandarin, plus short courses for free. [10] These
range from an hour local meeting to discuss a particular webinars provide a means to receive similar content as
topic to a full week long structured instructor led course. attending a conference or local seminar or meeting, without
A group of volunteers attempt to maintain a Google the travel. Some are also recorded and available online on
calendar with all reliability conferences, seminars, courses, demand.
meetings, etc. [10] The service has the capability for The pricing, content and presentation styles are all in
individuals to subscribe to the calendar or search by city, flux and many groups are experimenting with this relatively
region, or dates. new format to provide training. The mix of free or paid,
7. Courses advertising or training, introductory or advance, and
Face to face instructor led classes typically range from a formats, durations, etc. are all being explored and adapted to
half day to a week in duration. For example, MET Labs find what works. We should expect to see this area continue
offers short seminars on standards based testing methods. A to evolve and grow.
few organizations, such as Technology Training, Inc. (TTI), 10. Newsletters
offer courses on a broad range of reliability topics. And There seem to be two types of newsletters independent of
others offer courses related to using their primary the source. One provides news of events, products activities
product(s), e.g., Relex or Minitab classes on how to use their and announcements. These newsletters help the professional
software. keep current on what is happening based on the view of the
Courses provided by non-academic institutions are, with newsletter editors. The second type provides content that is
more frequency, offering certifications. These are based educational in some manner. These newsletters provide
typically on the successful completion of a series of courses. tutorials, problem solution approaches, guides, or technical
Examples are certification programs offered by ReliaSoft articles. Of course many newsletters combine the two types
and TTI. Not all seminars or courses offer professional of content. As far as I know, all newsletters are either free or
engineers CEU’s, although many could. a benefit of membership.
8. Local meetings/discussion groups/forums Ops A La Carte, RiAC, ReliaSoft, Relex, and many
In areas where there is a sufficiency of active volunteers, others offer free newsletters. Nearly all professional
local meetings are regularly organized and offered. Most are organizations offer a newsletter, often electronically, for
on a monthly basis and have invited speakers that cover their members. RMSP, for example, publishes an
topics of interest locally. Houston meetings may focus on informative newsletter with short technical articles
the oil industry, Wichita on private jets, San Jose on high quarterly. The RMSP newsletter is a benefit of membership.
tech. This is a traditional means to network, learn and Two notable newsletters with great technical content
contribute to the greater discussion concerning the reliability have ceased. It’s been a few years since I’ve received the
profession. IEEE, ASQ, and SRE are all active in this area. Society of Reliability Engineers’ newsletter. And, the ASQ


Reliability Division’s Reliability Review has just published a Hybrid approach. A mix of formal courses, a selection of
their last issue. Both found it increasingly difficult to find seminars and conferences, plus self study and experience. If
suitable technical articles to publish. one is lucky a mentor is discovered and cultivated.
Blogs on reliability are available by a few writers, yet it All three approaches produce excellent reliability
is not a prevalent practice. Ricky Smith’s Maintenance and professionals along with the full spectrum of performance
Reliability blog [13] or The Reliable Plant Blog [14] being abilities. Those that continue to take advantage of learning
examples. A Google search for ‘reliability blog’ finds an opportunities tend to continue to advance their career.
assorted array of blogs with reliability in the title of the
particular discussion with only a few blogs devoted to
13. What is missing?
From my own experience, I learn from product failures
reliability topics exclusively.
and an understanding of the root cause involved. Henry
11. Mentors Petroski has written about design engineers that avoid
Having a mentor or two during your career provides an design failures by a routine of studying failures. I highly
accelerated means to gain experience and guidance. Without recommend both To Engineer is Human and Design
a mentor you may learn the ‘hard way’, meaning you may Paradigms, found at Amazon or many other bookstores.
make your share of mistakes. A mentor provides a sounding [15]
board, reality check, insightful guidance and possibly A few years ago, the local IEEE Reliability Society
friendship. Some companies provide mentorship as part of chapter meeting was the day prior to Halloween and the
the culture. For example an opening for a Reliability discussion topic was ‘Reliability Horror Stories’. The intent
Engineering Group Leader job listing recently included the was to share the best failures in story form with each other.
role of ‘mentors the development...’ We are too often thwarted from discussing failures.
In discussions with other reliability professionals, Product failure discussion may reduce product sales or lead
learning from a mentor is often cited as a major element of to liability claims. Management or design failures leading to
their professional development. Courses, seminars and reliability issues may lead to politically charged discussions
conferences provide the tools, and the mentor provided and reorganizations. While attempting to focus on the data
wisdom in the selection and application of those tools. and the root cause, reliability failures still invoke a need to
assign blame. Furthermore, discussing failures tends to
12. Where do Reliability Engineers come from?
dwell on the negative aspects of the process. Yes, it provides
Other engineering fields provide the majority of
a much richer learning atmosphere, yet unless done in a
reliability professionals. Degrees in physics, math, statistics,
electrical or mechanical engineering and many others are “safe environment” may be career limiting.
common across our profession. In my case, and common Likewise, a discussion on very robust and reliable
with a few other reliability engineers that I know, when I product achievements is rare. A few products have been
asked how they became reliability engineers, it was by notable and marketed accordingly; the HP calculator is one
happenstance. The engineering problems that were available example. Very few products are able to maintain a
and interesting to me were of a reliability nature. Finding the significant edge in the market on the basis of being more
projects both interesting and rewarding, I sought additional reliable. Individual products are even more difficult to
projects in the reliability area. While working as a design for identify. The evidence is often the lack of higher than
manufacturing engineer, I found that field reliability expected field returns.
improvement often coincided with yield improvements for In general, what is missing is the ability of our profession
assembly. And, I found the cost savings by reducing field to talk openly about reliability performance, good or bad.
failures made a compelling argument for process We certainly can learn from failures, and we can emulate the
improvement investments rather than simply yield successful achievements, if possible to learn about both.
improvements. Failure data and information, not MTBF, is often
This path to become a reliability professional requires missing. For a particular design, what is most likely to fail
the willingness to continue to learn, the ability to learn and how? What is the failure mechanism and associated
quickly and the desire to contribute in the solving of difficult stresses that will limit the useful life? Vendors will gladly
cross discipline design problems. list the performance specifications and are often very
A few university programs offer degrees in reliability reluctant (ignorance, embarrassment, perception) to
engineering. These programs provide a solid grounding in articulate expected failure specifics. Vendors gladly list
the wide array of tools and techniques in the reliability testing that only has no-failures, leaving the recipient to
profession. The students are a mix of working professionals wonder if the test and associated stress was valid to the most
and students continuing from undergraduate work. Like the likely failure mechanisms.
above career development path, a formal education also Value or ROI guidance is generally missing within our
requires the desire to learn. The one complaint I’ve heard training, textbooks and discussions. What is the value of a
and experienced concerning this path is the over-reliance on well run Design FMEA session? In a culture of tight
advanced tools to address issues. What is missing is the timelines and budgets the time to conduct a Design FMEA is
ability to select the appropriate tools and analysis to readily estimated, yet the value received is difficult to
economically solve an issue - ‘Not everything is a thesis’ - predict. The same applies to many of the reliability tools in
(Anon by choice). A few reliability professionals have taken common use. A general set of guidelines or algorithms is


missing to permit the valuation of a specific tool in a and Judgment in Engineering, Cambridge University
specific application. Press, Cambridge, 1994
14. Summary
The reliability profession is rich in learning
opportunities. Books, websites, journals, conferences, etc.
all provide a mix of introductory and advanced materials. As
all fields of engineering and design continue to invent new
materials and novel assemblies, the reliability professional
will have to continue to learn how to best apply the
appropriate tools and techniques to solve problems.
Despite the barriers to freely sharing failure information,
we do readily share approaches, algorithms, techniques and
tools. We share our experience and our wisdom as we enrich
our professional community.
In general our education permits us to address two
questions of value: What will fail, and when will it fail? It is
in the details of providing answers that we provide value.
Our profession’s rich education opportunities permit us to
effectively and efficiently answer these two questions on an
ongoing basis.
9. References

[1]
http://reliabilitycalendar.org/The_Reliability_Calen
dar/Higher_Education/Higher_Education.html, date
viewed, January 12, 2012.
[2] http://rams.org, date viewed, January 12, 2012.
[3] http://www.ARSymposium.org, date viewed, January
12, 2012.
[4] http://www.ieee-astr.org/, date viewed, January 12,
2012.
[5] http://www.ecaus.org/conference/index.cfm, date
viewed, January 12, 2012.
[6] http://www.irps.org/, date viewed January 12, 2012.
[7] http://www.asminternational.org/content/Events/istfa/,
date viewed January 12, 2012.
[8] Ireson, W.G., Coombs, C. F., and Moss, R. Y.,
Handbook of Reliability Engineering and
Management, 2nd Edition, McGraw Hill, New York,
1996.
[9] O’Connor, P., Kleyner, A., Practical Reliability, 5th
Edition, Wiley, New York, 2012.
[10] http://reliabilitycalendar.org, date viewed, January 12,
2012.
[11]
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ieeereliabilitys
ociety/, date viewed, January 12, 2012.
[12]
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=187
5217, date viewed, January 12, 2012.
[13] http://www.ogj.com/blogs/maintenance-
reliability.html, date viewed, January 12, 2012.
[14] http://blogs.reliableplant.com/, date viewed, January
12, 2012.
[15] Petroski, H., To Engineer Is Human: The Role of
Failure in Successful Design, Vintage, New York,
1992, and Design Paradigms: Case Histories of Error


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