{"id":218076,"date":"2020-04-25T10:00:46","date_gmt":"2020-04-25T08:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/innovationorigins.com\/?p=218076"},"modified":"2020-04-25T10:00:46","modified_gmt":"2020-04-25T08:00:46","slug":"companies-are-trading-off-the-reliability-of-their-products-with-recalls-and-warranties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/en\/companies-are-trading-off-the-reliability-of-their-products-with-recalls-and-warranties\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cCompanies are trading off the reliability of their products with recalls and warranties\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Due to the Corona Crisis, Holland Innovative\u2019s seminar on “Data Science for Reliability and Root Cause Analysis” is postponed to 25 and 26 March, 2021. The event will show the best practices, latest trends, and innovations in open discussions and expert groups. Michael Pecht<\/a> – founder and director of the Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering<\/a> (CALCE), and Professor in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mathematics, Statistics and Scientific Computation at the University of Maryland – is the keynote speaker.<\/em><\/p>\n

As someone who has written more than 20 books on product reliability, development, and supply chain management, Michael Pecht is one of the most renowned experts in the field of reliability. He has published over 900 technical articles and has authored a series of books on the electronics industry in China, Korea, Japan, and India. Prof. Pecht advises small and large companies around the world on how they can integrate reliability into their processes. So when Holland Innovative\u2019s Hans Meeske started looking for the right keynote speakers for next year\u2019s Reliability Seminar, there was one name that couldn\u2019t be missed on the program.<\/p>\n

Prof. Pecht says he\u2019s happy he was asked to share his thoughts on the topic. \u201cThe importance of reliability has often been underestimated, but looking at the last 20 years or so, we have seen an increase in problems related to a failure of products like consumer goods, vehicles, and electronics. We\u2019ve seen an astonishing amount of recalls, and consumers obviously feel this is not appropriate or what it should be.\u201d These recalls are used as a defense against lawsuits, prof. Pecht says. \u201cCompanies accept that they suffer significant losses as well. They are willing to pay, but in fact, it moves the problem to the customers, who want a product that works and doesn\u2019t have to be returned to the retailer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Can you trust your suppliers?<\/h3>\n

In a world that depends more and more on electronics, reliability is a vital element, \u201cbut a complicated one as well,\u201d prof. Pecht adds. \u201cThe world is one huge network of connected systems. Value chains consist of several tiers of suppliers and distributors. The more you know about them, the better it is. But at some point, you just don\u2019t know where your supplies come from anymore, let alone if you would want to buy from those companies in the first place. In such a situation, sustaining the reliability of your products becomes quite difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prof. Pecht cites an example of this supply chain dilemma from his recent experience. \u201cWe were looking into a company that builds products using a battery pack. Of course, they knew who supplied these batteries, but what they didn\u2019t realize is that this supplier had to buy the battery cells to build the battery packs with. It turned out that the problems they encountered were caused by bad cells. As a manufacturing company, you need to follow the chain to the very beginning, but in practice, this is not always possible.\u201d Consequences can be serious: it\u2019s not always just a toy or a toothbrush that simply stops working. \u201cIn 2018 alone, 19 battery explosions have been reported inside airplanes,\u201d prof. Pecht explains.<\/p>\n

The situation becomes even more complicated when you find out that suppliers often don\u2019t know what the targeted application is. \u201cIn fact, most of them even don\u2019t care to know,\u201d prof. Pecht adds. \u201cIn a world where time-to-market becomes more important than ever and production standards are outdated and put together so that the community as a whole can pass, you can imagine this is a huge problem for reliability across the whole chain. Everybody in the chain wants to make more money, so there is a risk all over the chain. Can we trust all our suppliers? Small adjustments are being made all the time, without informing anybody further up in the chain. Managing the field of reliability is not an easy job.\u201d<\/p>\n

How can machine learning enhance reliability?<\/h3>\n

Michael Pecht\u2019s Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering (CALCE) works with more than 150 companies from all over the world. CALCE\u2019s research focuses on prognostics and systems health management (PHM) using machine learning. With PHM, it\u2019s possible to look into the actual life-cycle conditions of a system, determine the initiation of failure, and mitigate system risks. PHM can yield an advance warning of impending failure in a system and thereby help maintain the system and suggest corrective actions.<\/p>\n

Although the benefits of integrating reliability as an integral part of a company\u2019s manufacturing processes seem like a no-brainer, this is not always the case. \u201cIt depends on the industry you are looking at, but overall I would say that it\u2019s never enough,\u201d prof. Pecht explains. \u201cSome companies really do their best, but just don\u2019t have the best people to perform the job. It immediately shows when we start asking them some very basic questions to which they are unable to offer the answers. Others just underestimate the importance of reliability all together. Typically, when these kinds of companies call us for help – and on average, we get 2 or 3 calls like that every week – something already has gone terribly wrong. The engineers can\u2019t handle what\u2019s going on and want us to help them explain the problem to the management.\u201d<\/p>\n

Delivering a \u201cclean\u201d product: Is it enough?<\/h3>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Michael Pecht<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The management of a company, even large organizations, is often short-sighted, prof. Pecht has observed. \u201cThey are already satisfied if they are able to deliver a \u2018clean\u2019 product. \u2018We don\u2019t want to throw away our money to employees that don\u2019t directly contribute to the product\u2019, they say. A friend of mine is Head of Reliability for a company that produces hundreds of millions of products a year, and even there it\u2019s difficult. If things are okay, management concludes that the people a reliability department isn\u2019t needed at all. And if something goes wrong, they ask \u2018where have you been?\u2019 In fact, it always takes a disaster to realize how important reliability actually is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although there certainly are differences between countries or even continents as far as the acceptance of reliability within a company\u2019s processes is concerned, Michael Pecht is hesitant to say one company is performing better than the other. \u201cYou see differences between countries, between industries, and between single companies. And yes, some of these differences can be explained by local culture. In the US, for example, we are very litigious: the risk of lawsuits makes a company quite wary. In a way, this helps give reliability the attention it needs. But then again, companies are trading this off with recalls and warranties, so it\u2019s not a real solution. Mainland China is way less litigious and though I wouldn\u2019t want to say that generally, this leads to bad products, I really have concerns about the quality of their work. I recently visited more than 20 battery companies over there and honestly, I would hate to see the products of some of them end up in an article I would be using.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cData science can see things a human can\u2019t\u201d<\/h3>\n

Holland Innovative\u2019s March 2021 event will connect reliability and root cause analysis with data science. \u201cThat\u2019s a great focus,\u201d prof. Pecht reacts. As an integral part of his research and consulting, he is already using machine learning and a data-driven approach that can incorporate statistical and probability theories in addition to data preprocessing and data cleaning (de-noising). This approach can determine a product\u2019s failure risks, time to failure, and remaining useful life, as well as predict the moment when specific maintenance and repair actions should be taken to extend the life of the product. \u201cData science is a very big deal for us, for many reasons. It helps us gain knowledge when we are testing already. By pulling off data during the tests, we can see what really happens inside the electronics. Data science can see things a human can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, it\u2019s not about testing alone. Companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon are constantly gathering usage information via their consumer products, thanks to the numerous sensors in each product. \u201cData analytic tools can capture information straight from the end-user,\u201d explains prof. Pecht. \u201cIn fact, the product can monitor itself and in some cases can mitigate potential catastrophes on-the-go. You can imagine that this way of working can be crucial to the medical, energy, and aviation industries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professor Pecht, who also holds 10 personal patents, is already looking forward to next year\u2019s event, not only because he enjoys what he is working on and is eager to tell the world about it, but also because \u201cit can\u2019t be stressed enough that the field of reliability is way too important to be neglected. We need to educate and inform the industry. So I am delighted that Holland Innovative has taken the initiative for this important seminar.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Due to the Corona Crisis, Holland Innovative\u2019s seminar on “Data Science for Reliability and Root Cause Analysis” is postponed to 25 and 26 March, 2021. The event will show the best practices, latest trends, and innovations in open discussions and expert groups. Michael Pecht – founder and director of the Center for Advanced Life Cycle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1568,"featured_media":518492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8553],"tags":[32329,50051,45711],"location":[6763],"article_type":[],"serie":[],"archives":[],"internal_archives":[],"reboot-archive":[],"class_list":["post-218076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-digital","tag-holland-innovative-en","tag-michael-pecht","tag-reliability","location-netherlands"],"blocksy_meta":[],"acf":{"subtitle":"","text_display_homepage":false},"author_meta":{"display_name":"Bart Brouwers","author_link":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/author\/brewbart\/"},"featured_img":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/IMG_0058-1-300x200.jpg","coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["Digital<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Digital<\/span>"]},"tags":{"linked":["Holland Innovative<\/a>","Michael Pecht<\/a>","reliability<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Holland Innovative<\/span>","Michael Pecht<\/span>","reliability<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":"0","relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 6 years ago","modified":"Updated 6 years ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on April 25, 2020","modified":"Updated on April 25, 2020"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on April 25, 2020 10:00 am","modified":"Updated on April 25, 2020 10:00 am"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1568"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218076"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=218076"},{"taxonomy":"article_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article_type?post=218076"},{"taxonomy":"serie","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/serie?post=218076"},{"taxonomy":"archives","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/archives?post=218076"},{"taxonomy":"internal_archives","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/internal_archives?post=218076"},{"taxonomy":"reboot-archive","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/reboot-archive?post=218076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}