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Common Cause Failure – why redundancy isn’t always enough
Sep 23, 2026 · original
Redundancy is one of the most common ways of improving reliability. If one component fails, another can take over. Simple. Or is it? The effectiveness of redundancy depends on an important assumption: that the redundant elements fail independently. When that assumption is wrong, Common Cause Failure (CCF) can undermine the protection redundancy was intended to provide. What is common cause failure? CCF occurs when multiple items fail due to the same underlying cause. Individual failures may occur simultaneously or close together, but the important point is that they are not truly independent. Examples might include: Environmental conditions affecting multiple components. A design flaw present across identical items. A software error affecting multiple systems. Human error during operation or maintenance. Why redundancy can be misleading When reliability calculations assume independence,
US Government ERM Survey
Sep 22, 2026 · original
Guest Post by James Kline (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission) On October 27, 2022, The Association of Federal Enterprise Risk Management (AFERM) in conjunction with Guidehouse released the results of the eighth consecutive survey of federal agencies on their Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) efforts. This piece looks at the survey results. Survey Respondents and Questionnaire The survey covered 62 federal agencies, including 16 cabinet agencies. Half of the respondents indicated the presence of a chief risk officer or having an ERM office. The survey was conducted between June 14 and July15, 2022. (1) Survey Results The three tables below show the key findings from the survey. Overall, the survey indicates that the number of federal agencies using ERM has not substantially changed since 2021. However, there has been movement in the number of agencies tak
When Reports Are Too Good to Be True
Sep 22, 2026 · original
Monthly reports may show that asset performance is good. Availability is high. Compliance appears strong. Maintenance indicators look healthy. Yet output is still disappointing. That gap matters. It often means the organisation is reporting what is easy to measure, rather than what leadership needs to understand. Why this matters Reports shape decisions. If the underlying measures are flawed, leaders may believe asset performance is under control while operational losses, risk, and instability continue underneath the surface. Availability can be misleading Asset availability is often reported by maintainers using their own work order management system. The data in those systems can be flawed and, in some cases, misleading. Availability as reported by maintenance is often based on hours in the shop, not hours in the field. Those two measures can be far apart. Some maintainers also conside
Availability Is a Ledger, Not a Number
Sep 21, 2026 · original
Uptime math for rideshare and robotaxi fleets — and the six terms most operators leave out KEY TAKEAWAYS What it means in practice Define the clock first Every availability dispute is a dispute about the denominator. Publish a signed time-accounting taxonomy in which every second lands in exactly one bucket. Down time beats failure rate Halving mean down time buys as much availability as doubling MTBF, and usually costs less. Attack MDT before reliability growth. Series erosion is a design variable Fifteen subsystems at 0.995 give 0.928, not 0.995. The length of the critical-items list is negotiable through degraded-mode design. Driverless adds states Minimal-risk-condition stops awaiting remote assistance are downtime that generates no work order and appears in no FMEA. Model them explicitly. Remote assistance is a queue Response time is not linear in load. Sustainable vehicles-per-oper
Reliability and Sustainability: Building a Resilient Future
Sep 21, 2026 · original
Sustainability is a fundamental responsibility for businesses aiming to reduce their environmental footprint, improve efficiency, and build long-term resilience. Reliability plays a crucial role in achieving sustainability goals by ensuring that assets, processes, and operations function efficiently, reducing waste, energy consumption, and environmental harm. Organizations that prioritize reliability through proactive maintenance, predictive analytics, and sustainable asset management create a more resource-efficient, environmentally friendly, and financially sustainable operation. How Reliability Supports Sustainability Reliability and sustainability are deeply interconnected. Unreliable systems lead to more waste, higher energy consumption, and increased emissions, all of which negatively impact sustainability efforts. On the other hand, a reliable organization benefits from: Lower ene
Why I Wrote a 600-Page Book About Reliability Engineering
Sep 20, 2026 · original
My first job with the word “reliability” in the title was at a mining operation, and the whole program fitted on one shelf: a folder of oil sample results that came back from the laboratory each month, and a set of motor vibration readings compared by eye with the month before. When a number looked out of place we raised a work order. It caught faults, and it beat waiting for the bang. But that was all of it, on a fleet and plant worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and I had assumed there would be more. There is more, and it took me years to find it. What kept me looking was an arithmetic lesson heavy industry teaches quickly: the sums attached to reliability decisions are enormous, and the changes that move them are small. A percentage point of availability on the plant that constrains the operation is worth millions of dollars a year. So is a fleet that moves the same tonnes with tw
Africa’s Rotating Equipment Failures: The Case Against Blaming the Machine
Sep 17, 2026 · original
There is a statistic making the rounds in reliability engineering circles that should stop every African plant manager cold. According to field data compiled across multiple industries on the continent — cement, mining, port operations — more than 70% of rotating equipment failures are not caused by the equipment itself. The bearings are not defective. The motors are not undersized. The gearboxes are not poorly manufactured. The failures are caused by us. That finding, published in Kenya Engineer Magazine (March–April 2026), cuts to the heart of something the continent’s industrial sector has been unwilling to say plainly: Africa is not suffering from an equipment problem. It is suffering from a practice problem. And the difference matters enormously, because one of those problems requires capital to solve, while the other requires discipline. What the Data Actually Says The breakdown of
Human Performance: Don’t Stop Your Root Cause Analysis Too Soon
Sep 17, 2026 · original
Root cause analysis loses its value the minute we settle for surface-level explanations like ‘human error,” “inadequate training,” or “poor communication.” These labels feel comfortable yet rarely reflect the real causes. Getting to the root causes and meaningful improvement begins only when we push past the easy answers and examine the systems and decisions that shape front-line performance. The real cause is usually one question past where most RCAs stop. From the Real World I was working with an engineering director to help his team develop a new approach to root cause analysis. He invited me to sit in on one so I could form an opinion of what they were doing. The format was fine. What concerned me was how casually the team stopped digging once they reached human factors. I also knew the director was proud of, and sensitive about, his current program. At the end of the debrief, I aske
Fault Tree Analysis – understanding how failures combine
Sep 17, 2026 · original
We previously explored FMEA as a structured way of thinking about how systems fail. Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) approaches the problem from a different direction. Instead of starting with individual failure modes and asking what might happen, FTA starts with an undesirable outcome and asks: “What could cause this to happen?” Starting with the top event Every fault tree begins with a defined event of concern, often called the “top event”, which might be: Loss of a critical function. Failure to complete a mission. A safety incident. Loss of system availability. The analysis then works backwards, identifying combinations of failures and conditions that could lead to that outcome. Looking at combinations, not just individual failures One of the strengths of FTA is its ability to reveal how multiple events can interact. In many systems, significant failures are not caused by a single component
A Case Study of a Motorized Windshield Wiper System for Heavy-Duty Trucks
Sep 17, 2026 · original
Understanding Failure Accumulation in Repairable Systems Many assets are repaired and returned to service repeatedly throughout their operating life. Motorized windshield wiper systems used on heavy-duty trucks are one example. For these repairable systems, the engineering challenge is to compare designs, evaluate performance, and estimate future maintenance demand. The nonparametric growth curve measures the average number of failures accumulated by a repairable system over time without assuming any statistical distribution. The Case Study This example compares two motorized windshield wiper system designs installed on a fleet of heavy-duty trucks operating under similar service conditions. Whenever a wiper system failed, it was repaired and returned to service. The objective was to determine which design accumulated failures more slowly throughout its operating life. Event Plot showing
2. ALT Test – Results
Sep 16, 2026 · original
Accelerated Life Testing (ALT) is a powerful method for predicting product reliability by subjecting components to elevated stress levels and observing their time to failure. Understanding whether to use HALT or ALT depends on your testing goals, as both methods rely on elevated stress levels but serve different purposes in a reliability program. If you are new to the methodology, a solid grounding in Accelerated Life Testing (ALT) fundamentals will help you interpret these results with greater confidence. After running tests at three different stress levels, the next step is to analyze the results to understand how stress impacts the product’s life, particularly focusing on metrics like R90C90 (90% reliability at 90% confidence). If you’re new to the concept, our video explainer covers the fundamentals of predicting product reliability through accelerated testing before diving into resu
Question the Use of Reliability Testing Standards
Sep 16, 2026 · original
Each of us have seen product life or component reliability claims on product literature or data sheets. We may even have received such claims stated as goals and been asked to support the claim with some form of an experiment. Standards bodies from ANSI, BSI, ISO, IEC, and others from around the world provide standard methods for testing products. This includes product life testing in some cases. I have found that naive use of industry standards leads to over and under testing, over confidence, missing critical flaws and a waste of resources. The standards can be useful, yet not when used without some thought and consideration of the product’s failure mechanisms. For those that regularly read my posts, you know my view of our work requires our critical thinking to be successful. We tend to rely on standards to save time, to satisfy customer and contract obligations, or to help ensure we
6 Ways to Improve Maintenance and Production
Sep 15, 2026 · original
Good practices for better performance from production and maintenance Good practices for better performance from production and maintenance. The journey to world-class production performance is a partnership effort from the Engineering, Production and Maintenance groups in an organisation. It requires involving them in improving business quality systems and assuring individual’s work quality. Improving Maintenance and Production calls-for setting-up opportunities to work together in teams and to help each person master their duties. Here are six useful improvements you can make in the Maintenance and Operations groups to help them become more successful. Keywords: maintenance management, work quality control, work quality assurance, equipment reliability, physics of failure, failure prevention, defect elimination World-class industrial operations use their maintenance efforts to make the
Incident Management And Why It’s Important
Sep 15, 2026 · original
Guest Post by Bill Pomfret (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission) How many incidents, hazards and near misses does your organisation experience in a year? Failing to manage and resolve incidents not only puts your employees’ well-being at risk but also the future of your organisation. In this article, we will examine 10 common signs that indicate you need a better incident reporting process, we share the key benefits of bringing your incident management process online, and we explore the technology available to build a best-practice framework for incident reporting. What is incident management and why is it important? Incident reporting or incident management involves the logging of workplace events, including outages, near misses, injuries, and accidents; and it requires the documentation of all facts relating to each incident. Incidents can be classified
Reliability and Its Impact on Corporate Responsibility
Sep 14, 2026 · original
Corporate responsibility goes beyond financial performance. It includes a commitment to sustainability, safety, ethical operations, and stakeholder well-being. Reliability plays a crucial role in fulfilling these commitments by ensuring assets, processes, and operations function as intended without failures that could harm people, the environment, or the company’s reputation. A reliable organization upholds safety, environmental stewardship, ethical business practices, and social responsibility, strengthening its long-term sustainability and credibility. How Reliability Supports Corporate Responsibility Reliability is more than just asset uptime and performance; it is a strategic enabler of responsible business practices. An organization with high reliability benefits from: Safer workplaces, reducing injuries and fatalities. Lower environmental impact, minimizing emissions, spills, and w
Human Reliability: The Hall of Fame of Human Error
Sep 10, 2026 · original
Some of the greatest players in baseball history also committed the most errors. That fact surprises people at first, but it should not. The players who appear at the top of the all‑time error list were long‑tenured, high‑impact professionals who handled the toughest plays in the most demanding eras of the game. Their careers show that mistakes are not the opposite of excellence. They are part of it. The three players highlighted here illustrate the point clearly. Their backgrounds, positions, and error totals help us understand why human error is a natural part of meaningful work. Greatness Includes Imperfection Deacon White, Cap Anson, and John Montgomery Ward all committed hundreds of errors. They also shaped the sport, set records, and earned their place in Cooperstown. Their careers show that excellence is not defined by the absence of mistakes. It is defined by the ability to perfo
How to Run a Post-Breakdown Review That Actually Changes Something
Sep 10, 2026 · original
Most post-breakdown reviews produce a report. The best ones produce a decision. Here is the difference, and how to run the second kind. How to Run a Post-Breakdown Review That Actually Changes Something The breakdown happens. The equipment gets repaired. Production resumes. And within forty-eight hours, a meeting is called. Everybody knows what kind of meeting it is before they walk in. The maintenance manager prepares a timeline. The operations team prepares their questions. The plant manager sits at the head of the table with an expression that communicates accountability without yet specifying whose. The technicians who did the actual repair work sit quietly and hope the conversation stays at the management level. An hour later, the meeting ends. A report gets written. Actions get assigned to people who are already stretched. The report gets filed. The actions get deferred. And in fou
Part 4: What Intervention Creates the Best Outcome?
Sep 10, 2026 · original
In Part 1, we asked: What failure are we managing? We learned that physical failures generally arise from three fundamental processes: random, aging, and environmental failures, and their potential combinations. In Part 2, we asked: What type of asset are we managing? We learned that different assets require different reliability models. A bearing, a pump, and an entire processing plant are fundamentally different analytical problems. In Part 3, we asked: How important is the failure? We learned that probability alone does not determine priority. Asset criticality and the consequences of failure determine where organizations should focus their limited resources. This brings us to the final question: What intervention creates the best outcome? This is where reliability engineering becomes decision-making. Maintenance Is Only One Possible Intervention Many reliability problems can be addre
FMEA thinking – understanding how systems fail
Sep 10, 2026 · original
One of the most widely used tools in reliability engineering is Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA). Many engineers will recognise it as a worksheet, a table, or perhaps a lengthy review meeting involving coloured spreadsheets and risk rankings. But the real value of FMEA lies elsewhere. At its core, FMEA is a structured way of thinking about failure before failure occurs. Start with the failure mode A failure mode is simply the way in which an item, function or process can fail. The key question is not: “What broke?” It is: “How could this fail, and what would happen if it did?” That shift in thinking encourages teams to move from reacting to problems towards anticipating them. Looking beyond the component Effective FMEA is not limited to hardware failures. Failure modes can arise from: Design decisions. Software behaviour. Human interaction. Interfaces between systems. Processes
1. ALT test – Design
Sep 9, 2026 · original
Pre-ALT Baseline Testing: What to Establish Before You Begin Prior to ALT, it’s important to establish a baseline for the product. If you’re new to the concept, reviewing accelerated life testing fundamentals and the Accelerated Life Test (ALT) video explainer first will provide the context needed to make the most of this design guidance. This involves: – Functional Testing: Confirming all units perform within specifications at standard conditions. – Initial Screening: Removing early-life failures (infant mortality) through burn-in or screening, so only representative units proceed to ALT. – Material and Process Review: Evaluating materials, manufacturing, and assembly quality to eliminate defects unrelated to the intended stress factors. – Failure Mode Analysis: Reviewing historical data and performing Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) to anticipate which failure mechanisms could

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