It is indisputable that engineering has been transforming the world through the years, since it seeks to generate technical creations to solve humanity's problems, facilitating and optimizing systems and processes.
Today the word engineering is heard together with the word reliability, this is because the current needs of any company or organization require analysis and techniques that allow them to optimize and maximize the profitability of their production processes; that ensure the maintainability of assets, such as: design quality, technology used, technical complexity, frequency of failures, inventory management, preventive / corrective maintenance costs, operational costs, levels of accessibility, etc.
Reliability gives the possibility of identifying factors that affect the fulfillment of goals and opportunities for improvement; and forecast the chances of failure or inconvenience. This will not only find itself immersed in industrial processes but also involves subjective factors such as human talent and thinking, to make decisions with wide reliability. Simply to ensure good operations in any aspect, reliability engineering allows studying the behavior of products during their development and during their useful life.
Fundamentals, what is reliability engineering?
Before knowing and understanding the concept of Reliability Engineering, it is important to go back and refresh what engineering and reliability is separately.
Reliability
This word manages to express a certain degree of security that a device or system successfully operates in a specific environment during a certain period (Fundación wikipedia Inc., 2013). This conception had its origins in military and space technology; hence reliability is expressed without in quantitative terms, which makes it a parameter in the design of a system that seeks to decrease and combat other parameters such as cost and performance.
Engineering
One of the best concepts to call engineering is the one proposed by Emilio Rosenblueth (outstanding engineer of the 20th century in Mexico), describing it as follows: “Engineering is a profession… In terms of art, its purpose is expression; in science the approach to the truth; customer service in a technique and service to society in a profession ”(Que es la Ingeniería, 2008). Other authors define it as “the probability that a product unit will perform satisfactorily, fulfilling its function during a designed period of time and under previously specified conditions” (Acuña Acuña, 2003). Without a doubt after what has been previously described, it is understood that reliability requires technical knowledge, techniques, manuals, and skills;bearing in mind that its bases must be different and innovative knowledge, since any problem will always be different.
What is Reliability Engineering?
Reliability Engineering is one that focuses on fault elimination processes through the use of various analytical tools that allow improving processes, activities, resources, designs and others, within the corrective, preventive and predictive maintenance tactics (SPM Engineering in Maintenance, s / f). In addition, this engineering is supported by other disciplines to ensure good operations in the field where it is located, such as: the diagnosis of material and equipment failures, proactive and integrated studies of equipment, processes and systems, statistics, models, etc. as a fundamental basis for maintenance.
Likewise, with these tools, it provides the basis for calculating the probability of a system not working correctly, with the aim of establishing an income function that forces the optimization of processes by evaluating their Operational Reliability in order to estimate the real economic convenience of a change in the way to manage or a new investment initiative (Arata Andreani, s / f).
Scopes and objectives to ensure good operations.
To ensure good operations in any organization, business or company, reliability engineering has as its primary objective to increase the reliability, use the redundancy, of the assets seeking to increase their availability, and improve the profitability of the business.
Reliability Engineering focuses on achieving (O'connor, 1989):
- Prevent, decrease and reduce the frequency of failures through the application of engineering knowledge. Correct and identify the causes of repetitive or catastrophic failures. Define methods to minimize failures that have not been identified or corrected their causes. Analyze data and Apply techniques to estimate reliability in new designs.
How to estimate the reliability of a system?
This Engineering applies Operational Reliability, as part of a continuous improvement process, to easily incorporate advanced diagnostic tools, reliability methodologies and the use of new technologies for the optimal search for planning and decision-making. For this reason, it is necessary to estimate reliability or the probability of failure, where it is common to find two methods:
The life cycle curve is segmented into three moments where failures occur, which are described below:
Causes of failure during infant period: These can be caused by poor seals or joints; poor solder joints; poor connections; contaminated or dirty surfaces; Chemical impurities in metals or insulators; or incorrect position of parts. Causes of failure during the period of useful life: These can be generated by effort of a system outside the specified; occurrence of higher than expected random loads; defects that escape detection methods; human errors in use; application failures or inappropriate applications; abuse; unexplained causes; or the most naive "Because God wanted". Causes of failure during the end of life period: These can be corrosion or oxidation; breakage or leakage of insulators; friction or fatigue; and breakage in plastics.
Characteristic curve of the life of a product. Source: (Rivera Mejía, s / f).
Reliability Engineering Benefits
There are many benefits that reliability engineering offers, since it is a platform that allows comprehensive diagnostics to be carried out with the information that is available from a device, be it historical data, condition data or technical data.
Among other contributions, it facilitates monitoring the reliability and risk status of equipment, subsystems and systems, favoring making assertive decisions at the right time. It also contributes in comparing the relative cost of a maintenance action against the level of risk reduction or improvement in the performance of an action.
Another peculiarity is that it minimizes and often mitigates the foreseeable risks (in terms of productivity, safety, environment, and reputation) with the implantation of Reliability techniques. The main benefits of Reliability engineering are summarized in:
- Meet customer expectations for functionality and service life. Decrease foreseeable risks from equipment operation and health hazards. Increase system availability by decreasing failure rates and downtime. production objectives, improves the marketing of products and avoids the use of guarantees.
A different perspective, human reliability
Undoubtedly, a source of competitiveness for companies is Human Talent to solve the needs and achieve the strategic objectives, in favor of the same employees, company and society.
The companies in their constant search for new results, some include strategies, policies and mechanisms that allow Human Talent to participate in programs becoming strategies of Human Reliability.
Human Reliability can be defined as "the capacity for efficient and effective performance of people in all processes, without making mistakes derived from acting and individual knowledge, during their job competence, in a specific organizational environment" (García Palencia, 2014). This system manages influential elements such as optimizing knowledge, abilities, skills and attitudes, with the members of the company that allow generating Intellectual Capital. Implementing staff training plans with the promotion of strategies, which will allow tasks to be carried out correctly. So it is important to include policies to form a vision of the future; when human talent training occurs, it becomes a vehicle for organizational culture.
When Human Reliability actions are carried out, the main objective is to recover the value of people to increase their skills, improve their knowledge, their physical capacities, their experience, and their work motivation. This generates benefits to optimize communications and personal relationships that as a consequence elevates the sense of belonging towards personal development and corporate culture.
conclusion
National and international markets have forced companies to implement reliability as engineering within their organization; since this appeared to satisfy the need to anticipate failures and their occurrences in the processes or products.
Reliability engineering offers the opportunity to design processes capable of manufacturing high quality products (preventing failures during production and after manufacturing) satisfying customer needs such as: durability, quality, price and delivery time.
It goes without saying that reliability ensures the organization's operations in the market, responding to customer demand and its ability to deliver a product with performance without failures due to the useful life that is offered to the customer.
Thesis proposal
"Restructuring of the quality department, to cover reliability engineering aspects and ensure good operations"
objective
Restructure the department, considering the activities involved in reliability engineering, link them to the quality department, and generate better systems administration; to increase the company's imagery positively and reliability.
Bibliography
- Acuña Acuña, J. (2003). Reliability engineering. Costa Rica: Technology of Costa Rica.Arata Andreani, A. (s / f). Reliability Engineering. Retrieved on November 21, 2015, from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso: http://www.magister-mam.com/ingenieria-confiabilidad.html Fundación wikipedia Inc. (2013). Retrieved on November 21, 2015, from https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/ConfianzaGarcía Palencia, O. (July 2014). What is human reliability? Retrieved on November 21, 2015, from http://www.reporteroindustrial.com/blogs/Que-esla-confiabilidad-humana-Parte-1+98820msanchez (s / f). Reliability Engineering. Retrieved on November 29, 2015, from mrconsulting: http://imrconsulting.net/?page_id=39&lang=esO´connor, P. (1989). Practical reliability engineering. Great Britain: John Wiley and Sons, Rivera Mejía,DJ (s / f). Technological Institute of Chihuahua. Retrieved on 2015 November 2015, from http://www.depi.itchihuahua.edu.mx/jrivera/inst_avan/notas_instavan_ui.pdfRosenblueth, E. (2008). What is Engineering. In D. Reséndiz Núñez, The engineering puzzle (p. 14). Mexico City: Economic Culture Fund, Servicios Integrales RDT, CA (March 2015). RDT. Obtained from Importance of Reliability Engineering: http://www.serviciosrdt.com/2015/03/26/importancia-de-la-ingenieria-enconfiabilidad/SPM Ingenieria en Mantenimiento. (s / f). Reliability engineering. Retrieved on November 21, 2015, from http://www.spm-ing.com/ingenieria-deconfiabilidad.phppdfRosenblueth, E. (2008). What is Engineering. In D. Reséndiz Núñez, The engineering puzzle (p. 14). Mexico City: Economic Culture Fund, Servicios Integrales RDT, CA (March 2015). RDT. Obtained from Importance of Reliability Engineering: http://www.serviciosrdt.com/2015/03/26/importancia-de-la-ingenieria-enconfiabilidad/SPM Ingenieria en Mantenimiento. (s / f). Reliability engineering. Retrieved on November 21, 2015, from http://www.spm-ing.com/ingenieria-deconfiabilidad.phppdfRosenblueth, E. (2008). What is Engineering. In D. Reséndiz Núñez, The engineering puzzle (p. 14). Mexico City: Economic Culture Fund, Servicios Integrales RDT, CA (March 2015). RDT. Obtained from Importance of Reliability Engineering: http://www.serviciosrdt.com/2015/03/26/importancia-de-la-ingenieria-enconfiabilidad/SPM Ingenieria en Mantenimiento. (s / f). Reliability engineering. Retrieved on November 21, 2015, from http://www.spm-ing.com/ingenieria-deconfiabilidad.phpcom / 2015/03/26 / importance-of-engineering-dependability / SPM Maintenance Engineering. (s / f). Reliability engineering. Retrieved on November 21, 2015, from http://www.spm-ing.com/ingenieria-deconfiabilidad.phpcom / 2015/03/26 / importance-of-engineering-dependability / SPM Maintenance Engineering. (s / f). Reliability engineering. Retrieved on November 21, 2015, from
