Reliability Leader with Adam Bahret

Products programs aim to grab maximum market share with a carefully crafted balance of product factors such as, technology, time to market, cost point, and reliability.  Why do we so often not end up with a product that reflects that product factor balance?  It's how the goals are transferred to the team.  The Focus Rotation method is a tool to assist with making sure the full team...

Guest Ann Marie Neufelder from Mission Ready Software consulting joins me to discuss the most critical factors in developing highly reliable software. Ann Marie, with her team has created highly advanced models based on over 30 years of performance data. These models direct market leading companies in best development practices and the ability to predict reliability performance.

Rick and I discuss how software development and reliability has evolved over the past decades. It has gone from simple debugging, to "lint" and is now transitioning into AI.

A quick overview on how software reliability is different than electro-mechanical reliability.

There should be someone else in the room when making program decisions. It's the customer.  This is how to do it. The Phantom's Contract.

In this episode I review the Anchoring Methodology. It is a method to ensure teams get the best ROI from reliability tools by creating specific points for tool outputs that connect with eh higher-level program objectives.

In this episode I discuss the tool Strategy Bounding.  Strategy Bounding allows us to make quantitative decisions regarding balancing major program and product factors like time to market, cost point, reliability, new feature development

There are so many places to find inspiration for invention and improved design. This episode starts with a story about how one of the largest companies in the world today started by finding a solution to a problem in a separate industry. I then discuss a few simple ways to use innovation to improve products early in your development process.

The earliest documented customer complaint that has been discovered is from 1750 BC. It was very specific in the issue with the product and was written and delivered in a manner that indicated the customer was very upset.  What can we learn from this dynamic of customer and merchant that has been a staple of business since the dawn of man?

I discuss the concept of "Time to Reliability."  Time to Reliability is considered the total time from design concept up until the moment when a product is in the customer’s hands performing to the standard of its reliability goals. In a traditional design process, this is often not the same as "Time to Market." A low-reliability product release will require a "Recovery" phase after the initi...

Guests Frank Bruno and Bill Kennedy, along with myself, discuss the benefits of patenting innovations that were specifically created to increase product safety. Not only can these patents provide the documentation necessary to defend against litigation, but they can also be sufficient in deterring litigation altogether. Frank A. Bruno is a partner at White and Williams in Philadelphia and chair of...

Bill Kennedy, from White and Williams law firm, joins me to talk about the benefits of patenting safety features. If litigation occurs from failures and consequently causes injury or property damage, the result all comes down to proving intent. If features were created specifically to enhance safety, why not patent them so that they are fully documented. This is a great foundation for building a d...

Why are we so passionate about reliability engineering?  More specifically, why am I so passionate about it? Great question, in this episode I dive into my love for reliability engineering. As a preview, it all started at a cocktail reception. I had an interesting conversation with an executive who had no experience in product development. He asked about what I do for work and, as I described...

Mark Wirth returns to continue our discussion (from episode 7) on how to apply the best problem-solving techniques to any situation. There were so many great topics up for discussion, we just couldn’t fit it all in one episode. More on Mark at solverellc.com

Mark Wirth, a problem-solving expert, and I have a great conversation about how a complex technique should be applied to an individual problem. It's a Goldilocks situation; not too much and not too little. But how can we know before we start?  Mark describes four critical factors that can't be compromised. More on Mark at solverellc.com

We so often look to save time by jumping into a project unprepared.  It appears that going forward as quickly as possible with what we think is a well-thought-out idea is going to save time. Well, as we all know, hindsight is 20/20. In this episode, I discuss how, in retrospect, we often see that time would have actually been saved by investing time to create a more detailed and research-base...

Ken Haven is the CEO of Acorn Product Development. Acorn is one of the world leaders in electro-mechanical product design.  As a consulting firm, they see design in practice across all industries and companies of any size imaginable. We get to hear Ken's unique perspective on common pitfalls that result from not designing the product intended.  More on Acorn can be found at https://www.a...

My good friend Henry Chidgey joins the show to apply his many decades of experience coaching executives to a role-playing segment centered in product development. More info on Henry can be found at https://henrychidgey.com/

I discuss how organizational reliability assessments work. Key points include: Where did the methodology come from? How are they done? What does the organization do with the assessment results?

Jim McLinn joins us to share wisdom from his 40 years of helping organizations get the most from Design for Reliability (DfR). We focus on the multi-decade transition the industry has undergone from silo-style organizations to integrated organizations. Most importantly, how that change has affected reliability engineering’s ability to influence design early on in development.

I discuss our milestone of reaching the fourth phase of the practice of reliability engineering, Reliability Culture.  Reliability as a discipline in product development started with the simple strategy of "over design." As a refresher, we started with big, heavy, and strong items to accomplish a task. If these weren’t getting the job done, we tried something even bigger and stronger. Phase t...