Information About Larry George

and Problem Solving Tools

Larry trying to think

Larry trying to think->

Satisfied customers include:: Medical: Abbott (Diagnostics Division), Pryon (gas sensor), Enact (respirometer), Uniphase and Spectra Physics (lasers), Target Therapeutics (stent), Infimed (CRT), IEC (Centrifuge), J&J Lifescan (glucometer), UVDI (UV treatment), Microflex (gloves), Medtronics (pacemakers), GE diagnostics, The WHO (SARS, bird flu, and H1N1)...; Transportation: Ford, GM, Chrysler, Honda America, Wabash Magnetics (sensors), Lear, Cummins (Indiana and India) (engine controllers), Cessna (avionics), Lycoming (engines), Delphi, Wabtec, City of Pleasanton (traffic), NHTSA (Firestone tires), Tractor and Farm Equipment (Chennai), Prolificx TrakPod...; Computer: Apple, Sun, Dell, HP Commercial Printers, Quantum, WD, Seagate, Analogic (PC boards), Wyse, Granite Microsystems, Xycom, Themis, Tut Systems, Intevac, Violin Memory, Lab126 (Kindle),...; Semiconductors: Form Factor, Disco USA, Intevac, Applied Materials (training, tests, inventory), SanDisk, Catalyst Semiconductor (EEPROMs), Motorola (ICs), BOC Edwards High Vacuum, Lam Research (FTA), SCP Global, Levitronix (pumps), Watlow Electric (heaters), Agilent Technologies (interferometers), Phillips LumiLEDs and Cree (LEDs)...; Communications: Farallon, HP laser, Lucent, Motorola, Northern Telecom, Raynet, Nortel, Cisco, Brocade, Shoreline, JDS Uniphase (optical amplifiers), Redline Communications, Vocollect,...; Electronics: Square D, Trident, NCR, Williams Games, Branson Ultrasonics, Imagenation, QCS, Astec, DigiDesign, UEC Technologies (Altech, South Africa), Phillips US, Copeland, System General,...; Power: EPRI, Westinghouse, GE, Siemens Solar, Schweitzer Engineering (digital relay), Solyndra, Amonix,...; Security and sensors: GE (Industrial Security), EDO RSS Corp., General Monitors, DSC, Industrial Scientific, Lockheed, EDO RSS (ITT), General Dynamics, MJS Designs,...; Other: Marvin (Windows and doors), Mercury Marine
For more information, see Equipment Reliability Institute or Applied Technology

Old publications: please ask for articles not on the Internet:: "The Bathtub Curve Doesn't Always Hold Water" ASQC Reliability Review, Vol. 15, No. 3, Sept. 1994 pp 5-7; "Multivariate Mechanical Reliability," ASQ Reliability Review, vol. 18, Dec. 1998; "Meta-Reliability," ASQ Reliability Review, Dec. 1999; "Statistically Verify Engineering Specifications," Applied Materials; "Actuarial Forecasts without Life Data," International Symposium on Forecasting, Washington DC July 1999; "Monica and Bill in Reliablity" PST Newsletter No. 6; "Mind Your Ps and Qs," simultaneously optimize price and order quantity, INFORMS Seattle, Oct. 1998; "Biased 85th Percentile Speed Limit," PST Newsletter No. 5; "Sell-Through Time, Calendar Time, and Operating Time Reliability," ASQ Reliability Review; "Test Nonparametric vs. Cox' Proportional Hazards Without Life Data," Nordstat 2000, Grimstad, Norway, June 2000; "Why Test?" ASQ Reliability Review, Vol. 21, No. 2, March 2001; "Field Reliability Estimation Without Life Data" Look on page 13 of the ASA SPES Newsletter; "Raising the Reliability Benchmark" co-author Eva Langfeldt; "Could Firestone and Ford Have Known?" and when could they have known? 1997; "Origin-Destination Proportions and Travel Time Distributions Without Surveys" INFORMS, Salt Lake City, May 2000; "Age-Specific Reliability Prediction," ASQ Reliabilty Review, co-author Eva Langfeldt; "MTBF and Reliability Prediction with Redundancy," ASQ Reliabilty Review, Dec. 2001; "Forecasting for the Automotive Aftermarket," SAE, Feb. 2004; "Measure Field Reliability with Statistics" Plant Maintenance Resource Center; "Broom Charts" ERI News, Vol. 7, May 2002; "Comments on MTBF Prediction for Redundant Systems," ASQ Reliability Review; Credible Reliability Prediction ASQ Reliability Division monograph; "Design of Ongoing Reliability Tests" ASQ Reliability Review, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp 5-13, 28, Dec. 2002; Biomedical Survival Analysis Comparison, crossover, and advances tells what reliability could learn from biostatistics and vice-versa. The Journal of the Research Analysis Center, Vol. 11, No. 4, 4th Quarter 2003; "Design and Analysis of Accelerated Reliability Tests, with Piecewise Linear Failure Rate," ASQ Reliability Review, vol. 24, Nos. 2 and 3, June and Sept. 2004 ASQ and IEEE Presentation; "Failures Before Returns, Left-Censored Data, and Reliability: What if Failures are not Returned or Reported When They Occur?," for "Spreadsheet Reliability" book, contact me for free samples, 2005; "Échecs avant des retours, des données Gauche-Censurées, et fiabilité : Ce qui si des échecs ne sont pas retournés ou ne sont pas rapportés quand ils se produisent?," Phoebus Revue de la Surete de Fontionnement, 2005

Recent Publications and presentations: (Some are available to ASQ members on Reliability Review and R&M Tech Briefs): "Broom Charts" ASQ R&M Tech Briefs, Vol. 1, No. 1, Oct. 2006; "Why Test?" ASQ Reliability Review, 2007; “Markov Approximation of Standby System Redundancy,” ASQ R&M Tech Briefs, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 3-5, Jan. 2007; "Estimate Part Reliability from System Ages at Failures Without Renewal Counts" ASQ Reliability Division Tech Briefs, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 10-14, March 2008; "System Degradation With Dependent Parts" ASQ R&M Tech Briefs, Vol. 2, No. 2, Aug. 2008, pp. 9-16; "Social Equity, Risk, Reliability, and Uncertainty" ASQ Meeting April 15, 2009; "Who is the Richest Man in North Carolina?" (Jim Goodnight, SAS) ASA SPES Marquardt Lecture, Cal Poly SLO April 2009; "The Production Line Genie and the Lamp" Introduction to the effects of correlation in production lines, 2010; "RAM Dependence Counts in Production Line Simulation, Workstation Availability with Dependence" Applied Reliability Symposium, Reno, Jan. 2010, corr(TBF, TTR) and corr(ln(TBF),ln(TTR)) > 0 increase average throughput and reduces variance!; "LED Reliability Analysis" Re-analysis of Phillips LumiLEDs' lumen deterioration Weibull extrapolation; "Nonparametric Forecasts from Left-Censored Data" "Component D"; "Complex Conjugate History of Reliability" Significant other statistical developments useful in reliability, Jan. 2011; "How to Foreast Repairable System Failures" ASA webinar from Nov. 14, 2011, oncluding sample and extrapolation uncertainties. It's already obsolescent but on the right track. See functional PCA below.

Future Publications: depending on demand: "Optimal Reliability Demonstration Test Plan with Uncertainty" workbook is available now; "Workstation Availability with Redundancy and Dependence"; "Cleaning up after obsolescence," forecast demand and plan spares production for obsolescent products; "Renewal Estimation Without Renewal Counts," for "Spreadsheet Reliability" book, contact me for copy and free samples; "Origin-Destination Proportions and Travel Time Distributions Without Surveys," for "Spreadsheet Reliability" book; "Estimate Reliability from Current Status Data" to appear in January 2012 ASQ R&M Tech Briefs; "Arrhenius' Law Reliability with Temperature Variations," Fix the constant-temperature version and add thermal stresses!; "Materials, Parts, and Subassembly Test Plans," How do you test reliability before the product is built? Prioritize actions to improve reliability and reduce uncertainty; "Compare Piecewise Linear Failure Rate Functions," Compare reliability before vs. after statistically, with or without acceleration

Software:: Max likelihood estimate of field reliability; "Least squares estimate of field reliability"; Actuarial forecasts and their distributions; "Spares inventory Management" dBASE and FoxPro, VBA version coming; "Fault Tree Diagnostics and Optimal Test Sequence" used in NASA Space Station; Homophone Detector and Checker an MS Word VBA Add-In; MTBF and reliability prediction with redundancy; "The proportion of customers who bought x and also bought y is %zz.zz." VBA, for Slauson Transmission Parts; Renewal Distribution Estimation Without Renewal Counts INFORMS San Jose, Nov. 18, 2002; Inclusion-exclusion VBA function for spreadsheet evaluation of cut set probabilities; Nonparametric maximum likelihood estimators of reliability and failure rate functions from left censored data; Mean-variance optimization for reliability allocation, inspired by Harry Markowitz and modern portfolio theory; LineSim.xls Serial production line simulations modified for dependence of workstation TBF, TTR, and processing times; Confidence intervals on TWR (Total Warranty Returns) from incomplete data, including extrapolation uncertainty by functional PCA

Teachers

Industrial strength speaker for:: INFORMS; ASA Section on Physical and Engineering Sciences; ASQ Reliabilty Division

How can I help make and verify reliability improvements and reduce uncertainty?

pstlarry@yahoo.com
Thank you for your interest.
Larry George, PhD ASQ Fellow and CRE (certified reliability engineer)

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