Over 100 Professionals...

... voted to remove this phrase from our reliability lexicon. (results here)

C:\Users\Reliability_Community>Dictionary>del "inherent reliability"

Why would so many of us want to remove this phrase (or reduce its usage)?

Well, to answer that question, let's take a look at a few of the other choices participants had to choose from:

Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF)

Perhaps one of the earliest phrases to irk reliability engineers (i.e. engineers who seek to quantify age-reliability relations) has been the widespread use/misuse of MTBF. There is a well known website seeking to eradicate this term not only from our language but from its use in specifications, purchasing requirements and more (see NoMTBF). A recent post on LinkedIn also shared a nice summary of some of the problems with this term (find it here).

If you've read this far, and even managed to check out these links, you may not be surprised to learn that MTBF received quite a few votes for removal from our reliability dictionary. But in the end, MTBF was only the 1st runner up (i.e. 2nd place)!

Risk/Heat Map

In 3rd place, we had risk/heat maps (color coded plots or tables of consequences vs likelihood). What could this useful tool have done to have bothered XX participants in this poll?

By subjectively categorizing both consequences and likelihood (a potential oversimplification), an organization can be left with something that is "worse than useless" and sometimes lead to "worse than random decisions" (at least according to this white paper!).

Criticality Rankings

In 4th place, we find criticality rankings. There are numerous ways of ranking the criticality of an asset. Most, if not all of them, require subjective ranking of different types of consequences. In many ways, this can carry many of the same flaws found in risk/heat maps above.

And the winner: Inherent Reliability

The widespread use of "inherent reliability" has been one of my personal pet peeves for some time. However, I will say I was surprised to see how many others in the community felt the same way. I tacked the phrase on as the 4th choice, thinking it was my own silent protest and it had no chance of being declared the winner.

The other 3 choices had some well-established flaws in logic or in their use, but what was it about inherent reliability that bothered so many?

For me, it comes down to not accepting that reliability is confined to a little box. It comes down to reliability being everyone's responsibility, not something inherent to a physical object. Reliability comes from the system (which includes people and process), not directly from a part. Both people and processes can change, and therefore, so can reliability - and if you're a persistent optimist - it can change for the better.

I'd like to think that if you have an optimistic outlook in change vs reliability, you will naturally find more options for improvement.

What next?

Now it is true that many of these terms are in widespread use. And it is also true, that their use serves a greater good by making large problems more tractable (simpler to solve), like figuring out how to improve reliability across a multi-billion dollar site or reduce our risk of a very bad day. However, is it possible that there are better ways?

Since each of these terms run the risk of over generalizing a particular concept (under the guise of being objective/data-driven), perhaps the best way to counter some negative outcomes is by focusing on details when possible.

Blackstart Reliability focuses on the details in 2 ways:

• DataStart? for Bad Actors
• DataStart? for Predictive Maintenance

Do these services take time? Yes.

Do these services take resources? Absolutely.

Do these services require data? (do we have to ask?)

Perhaps we can change our language, and change our tools as well... Eventually, breaking the cycle of:

That's the way we've always done it

Last but not least, I wanted to include some of the honorable mentions in the poll that came from comments and messages:

• "Maintenance AND Reliability"
• "Precision Maintenance"
• "Root Cause"
• "Wrench time"
• "Operator for Reliability"
• "Asset Management"
• "blame"
• "achieve synergy"
• "circle back"
• "any last nickels"

If you happened to submit any of the suggestions above, or if you voted for inherent reliability (that's a lot of you!), then you are entitled to 1 Free drink, my treat, next time we meet (I am looking forward to my next conference!).

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