ENMA 6050:  Reliability, Failure Analysis, and Risk Assessment

 

Course Description

 


Thanks to approaches such as statistical process control, total quality management, and most recently design for six sigma, the past decades have seen tremendous improvements in product, process, and system quality and reliability.  Yet somehow, things still seem to go wrong, and sometimes in a very big way.

 

ENMA 6050 provides students with a broad overview of why good things go bad.  Students are provided with a toolbox of commonly applied reliability, failure analysis, and risk assessment tools, including:

 

·         Process flow diagrams

·         Fishbone diagrams

·         Human factors analysis         

·         Fault tree analysis 

·         Root cause analysis

·         Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA)

 

Industry/business-sponsored student team projects provide the mechanism for students to apply these tools to real-world problems.

 

This course places special attention on management issues related to failure in large, complex systems, with case studies providing students with examples of how management can contribute to or preferably minimize reliability issues.

 

Note:  As a core course in the MS – Engineering Management program, this course does not address classical quality and reliability practitioner tools such as defect probability distributions, MTBF calculations, etc.  This course is directed primarily toward management of projects and people that involved in developing and maintaining high quality and high reliability products, processes, and services.