ISO, 6sigma, Black belt
Statement 3:
We are reliability aware because we have several ISO certificates, Six Sigma projects and black belts available
35% of the participants agreed!
35% really means that having this is a requirement to be reliability aware. Fortunately 65% had a different opinion.
Most of these activities have little to do with reliability but more with quality, which is something else. See article Quality vs Reliability.
However this explanation is too easy. Some depth is needed because there is a relation with reliability conform next statements, which are generally known:
- If one delivers bad quality, the chance for good reliability is rather small
- If one delivers good quality the chance for good reliability is higher
So there is no certainty. The basic issue here is, that in order to deliver good reliability one needs also good quality. If the level of reliability is high enough is a different story
The next text is written with a non reliabilty-aware company in mind!
Black belts
Black belts and their other colored colleagues have an important function in the Quality Assurance during production.
They also have an important signaling function for reliability in the next areas:
- during the development process
- the initial start of the production.
- during normal production
Quality related negative signals can have consequences for the reliability of the product. It is unfortunate that within a non-reliability aware company these signals are not clearly understood by bottom-uppers and/or correctly prioritized by the top-downers. They are just considered as being production process related problems or incidents and should be handled by the manufacturer. Before the real responsible persons come into action almost a disaster should happen. This item will be covered later.
Six sigma
Six sigma is a nice tool for quality assurance within manufacturing.
There is also a six sigma process in place as part of the development cycle DFSS (Design For Six Sigma). In general six sigma takes care of:
- as less variance in parameters as possible in order to make the product reproducible. This is mainly a development activity
- Changes in these variances are signaled in time in order to take measures before it is too late and corrective actions can be taken. Mostly it is caused by machine deviations or spread in the supplied components.
Products who are not reproducible. have a negative influence on the quality of the product but surely also on their reliability. A lot of nice reports are distributed but in a non reliability aware company it remains just paper.
ISO9000
And finally the ISO9000. Also described as "well documented garbage". That is too negative but there is also a great deal of truth in there as experienced myself.
Before the ISO era suppliers needed to prove that they had a kind of "Quality Manual" that proved their products were according to the requirements of their customers. So many customers, so many requirements. Despite the high costs it was too little effective.
ISO changed that. The quality system of the suppliers were judged by independent institutes against a certain standard. That would prevent customers to do their own investigation.
A strong lobby caused many supplier to be forced to get an ISO certificate otherwise they could be out of business
ISO 9000 requires a good documentation of all processes involved for creating products. That is one. The second thing is that one does what is documented. This is audited by an independent institute. If approved, then one receives the ISO certificate and use it in their ads. However the ISO certificate by itself does not include the level of the quality. As long as you create it according the documented procedures it is OK.
If the current level quality level is bad, then it stays bad.
Reproducibility of products is very important for the quality but also for the reliability of a product. In a lot of companies there are procedures, but only somewhere in a archive. Also seen were manufacturing procedures but reality was different. One learned from the experienced operator. Sometimes deterioration of the quality but worse it also had its effect on the reliability but could be unnoticed until it occurred in the field. Various times I tried to create a product myself following the official procedures. I refused to get taught by the experienced person. So what happened? In some cases the product could not be made. Or it took too long. The experienced persons found other ways to get the same final result, a working product. But take care, this is the quality aspect, the 0-hour situation. The reliability aspect was for the customer. Remarkably it was seen that some of the customer complaints were caused by a deviation of the official procedure in the factory causing latent failure modes to be present but unnoticed during manufacturing.
An adjustment procedure which took a very long time could be dramatically shorted by adapting the official procedure. This had no influence on the function. What they didn't know that the life expectance was shortened by 50% or more. One found out later once the customers complained.
The workarounds were not all bad. Often they were even much better than the original ones. But they should be documented via a change procedure etc. However change procedures were bureaucratic procedures and often discouraged.
The main advantage of ISO9000 was that again procedures were used.
"We have procedures, we have an ISO certificate, so everything is OK".
In reality this is just a small step into the right direction. In the meantime the ISO is improved over time but it has still little or no direct influence on the reliability of a product.
An interesting article can be found in ISO9000:Help or Hoax by Patrick D.T O'Connor