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Quality During Design Podcast Blog

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5 Aspects of Good Reliability Goals and Requirements

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Using Failure Rate Functions to Drive Early Design Decisions

Headphones illustrations by Storyset

We have good requirements for the reliability of our design. We also have a preliminary design with ideas of how we’re going to manufacture it. Is our design idea good enough? Are there things we should do to improve its performance and reliability? For a physical product, there are three general stages in its life…

Types of Design Analyses possible with User Process Flowcharts

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Design Tolerances Based on Economics (Using the Taguchi Loss Function)

Headphones illustrations by Storyset

Defining tolerances for our quality characteristics is sometimes not an easy task. If we set tight tolerances, it could be costly to make with a lot of rejects and rework in the future. If we’re too sloppy with our tolerances, then it can affect the functionality of our product, leading to unhappy customers, and also possible…

How many controls do we need to reduce risk?

When we’ve identified a risk to our design or user process – and that risk can pose a potential harm – how many controls do we need to add? We discuss prevention vs. detection controls, ALARP, as low as possible, and some scenarios where we could (and maybe couldn’t) justify a risk as acceptable without…

Solving symptoms instead of causes?

Headphones illustrations by Storyset