Reliability Engineering for the Business World – Upcoming Online Course Preview

Reliability Society

Agenda:

5:30-6:00 PM: Sign in, refreshments, and personal networking
6:00-6:10 PM: Chapter Chair greetings and announcements
6:10-7:45 PM: Presentation
7:45-7:55 PM: Q&A session, meeting adjourns

This presentation previews an online course about becoming a leader in reliability engineering, with the objective of teaching how to become the go to person in your business for objective business sensed reliability answers and requirements. While statistics are the tools of reliability engineering, it takes knowledge not only of these tools but also of the business. Developing knowledge of the business, from sales, engineering, customer service, to supply chain management can determine how effective you can be in improving reliability. Never take anything for granted, even some rules of thumb in reliability can be misleading, this course will show you how to prove what truly happens in the real world and how to effect change in any part of the business where it is needed. We will explore the balance sheet, organizational structure, customers, service, and high volume manufacturing. It’s not just about how often things fail, it is also about where the defect came from, what is the financial effect, the recovery, when should a business take field action, effect of human error, failure analysis/material science, reliability testing, and much more. I will also discuss how you develop executive buy in for change. The course assumes a basic knowledge in reliability statistics. There are 12 sessions that cover the following topics: Basics – Measurements, Business Model, Design Model (HW and SW), HALT/RDT/Predictions, Manufacturing Model, Early Life Failures, Wear Out and Mid Life Crisis, and Advanced Reliability.

Kevin Granlund, Distributed Systems Analysts, LLC

Kevin is an innovative leader in reliability methodologies with more than 30 years experience in the storage industry. In his latest role as Director of Engineering, he developed a top down reliability/availability management process for design organizations developing mission-critical storage systems. Kevin previously directed the most extensive HALT/HASS operation in the industry, with over 300 chambers worldwide. He has written several papers, consulted with many companies, 3 patents awarded and 2 pending related to systems reliability and test.

His most recent work has been performing system architectural analysis to optimize system availability, serviceability and costs. Providing guidance to development to maximize system reliability and reduce service costs.

He has provided consultation to many large companies such as EMC, CISCO, AT+T, HP, Seagate and many others. His position and experience has enabled him to perform extensive field studies and design of experiments. Kevin has developed many accelerated testing programs for both short term and long term reliability and developed cost models to enable more informed decisions.

He has developed Long Term Systems Reliability tests and processes for detecting early wear out design flaws. Also built models for non-traditional acceleration factors for unique design defects and managed the transfer of this technology to subcontractors.

Kevin has lead hundreds of FMEA on new designs and refined FMEA processes to maximize problem prevention in key technologies. Including power systems, logic systems, ASICs, disk drive systems, RAID, and networks.

Kevin is an active member of the Boston IEEE Reliability Society Advisory Committee.

Kevin received his ASEE degree from Worcester Industrial Technical Institute in 1979.

Email: granlundkevin@gmail.com

Meeting Location: MIT Lincoln Laboratory, 3 Forbes Road, Lexington, MA