Speaking Of Reliability: Friends Discussing Reliability Engineering Topics | Warranty | Plant Maintenance

Hosted by Reliability.FM: Accendo Reliability, focused on improving your reliability program and career

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Episodes

500

Latest episode

Oct 2026

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EN-US

About the show

Gain the experience of your peers to accelerate improvement of your program and career. Improve your product development process, reliability or warranty performance; or your plant uptime or asset performance. Learn about reliability and maintenance engineering practical approaches, skills, and techniques. Join the conversation today.

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60 recent

October 23, 2026

SOR 1219 AI for HALT Planning

Explore how AI for HALT planning can enhance test procedures and identify subtle performance issues in product testing.

October 19, 2026

SOR 1218 AI and the 6-Steps Part 2

AI and the 6-Steps Part 2 Abstract Carl and Fred continue to discuss the use of AI in achieving high reliability. This podcast episode continues the six-step reliability engineering process, focusing primarily on Step 4 (methods), Step 5 (planning), and Step 6 (execution). Key Points Join Carl and Fred as they discuss how AI can […]

October 16, 2026

SOR 1217 AI and the 6-Steps Part 1

AI and the 6-Steps Part 1 Abstract Carl and Fred explore how AI can be integrated into the six-step reliability engineering process, emphasizing that AI should be treated as a powerful tool that assists humans rather than replacing human judgment, experience, and critical thinking. This is part one of two parts. Key Points Join Carl […]

October 12, 2026

SOR 1216 Why Material Selection Is a Reliability Decision

Material selection can determine whether a component performs reliably throughout its intended life. Mojan and Enrico compare experiences from consumer electronics, automotive systems, robotics, and plastics engineering to explore the relationship between materials and reliability. They discuss failure analysis, damage mechanisms, engineering requirements, supplier influence, and the practical challenges of introducing alternative materials into production. The episode highlights why engineers should treat material selection as an early Design for Reliability decision rather than simply continuing with materials used in previous product generations.

October 9, 2026

SOR 1215 When ‘Alert Fatigue’ is a Reliability Problem

More data should help engineers make better decisions. But what happens when every dashboard is flashing red? Chris and Mojan explore alert fatigue as a reliability problem that extends far beyond software. From on-call engineers overwhelmed by incidents to maintenance teams living with condition-monitoring warnings months before a bearing might fail, the psychology is remarkably similar: warnings eventually become background noise. They discuss why constant firefighting prevents root causes from being addressed, why an RCM maintenance strategy should never become a laminated set of rules, and why better reliability engineering means delivering the right information to the right person at the right time.

October 5, 2026

SOR 1214 How Reliable Must a Surgical Robot Be?

How reliable does a surgical robot need to be? Chris and Mojan use that question to explore a much broader reliability engineering problem. Patients care about safe outcomes and what happens when the robot fails; hospitals also care about availability, utilization, and downtime. The conversation then moves upstream to where many expensive failures actually begin: poorly defined hardware-software interfaces and requirements delivered too late. They discuss why cutting early reliability work often makes development slower, not faster, and how AI-enhanced FMEA can expose difficult failure scenarios early enough for engineers to prevent them rather than discover them during validation.

October 2, 2026

SOR 1213 Are You Really Measuring Reliability?

Measuring reliability should help engineers make better decisions—not simply generate an impressive MTBF or another test report. Chris and Fred explore how misleading metrics, late reliability demonstrations, and ever-expanding test programs can create the appearance of reliability engineering without actually making products more reliable. One organization accumulated 47 tests simply by adding another whenever a field problem occurred. The result was not better engineering, but designers learning to design for the tests. The episode argues for something more useful: measure what helps engineers prevent failures, make better design decisions, reduce development cost, and get reliable products to market faster.

September 28, 2026

SOR 1212 Is it Reliable?

Is it Reliable? Abstract When a customer asks “Is it reliable?” they’re not asking about MTBF or lab test results. They’re asking: “Will this do what I bought it for?” Join Fred and Mojan as they explore why product management is the most underrated function in reliability engineering. From HP’s obsessive attention to printer sound […]

September 25, 2026

SOR 1211 Measuring Reliability

Measuring Reliability Abstract “It’s impossible to measure.” “It’s too vague.” If you’ve heard these objections, you’re facing a fundamental misunderstanding about measurement. Join Fred and Mojan as they explore Douglas Hubbard’s principle that everything can be measured—the real question is whether the cost of measurement is worth the reduction in uncertainty. They discuss how to […]

September 21, 2026

SOR 1210 When RCM Creates More Failures

Reliability-Centered Maintenance should do more than produce a list of preventive maintenance tasks. Chris and Carl examine how maintenance and supportability FMEAs feed RCM decision logic, and why maintenance thinking must begin before design is locked down. They challenge two particularly costly habits: treating initial maintenance intervals as permanent answers and assuming that more preventive maintenance always improves reliability. Without good failure data, servicing intervals may begin as educated guesses—and unnecessary intervention can itself cause failures. Effective RCM therefore needs feedback from field data, failure analysis, maintainability, and design to continually improve the maintenance strategy.