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"Dianna Deeney has launched a podcast that focuses on both the need and the 'how to' include quality and reliability in your design. Both entertaining and thoughtful, the shows are well done and worth subscribing."
Fred Schenkelberg, founder of Accendo Reliability
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I like talking with people in product design and the manufacturing industry. Contact me if you're interested in being interviewed and being a guest on the show.
You’ve spent 6 weeks and $50K investigating three materials. Your confidence has climbed from 40% to 60-85% across options. Your manager asks: ‘Which one? Are you sure? Should we test more?’ Real decisions involve trade-offs between confidence, cost, timeline, and performance. In Phase 1, we identified a High Impact/Low Likelihood decision (40% confidence). In Phase…
Industries with high consequences (medical, aerospace, automotive) have evolved sophisticated testing strategies that balance regulatory requirements, budget constraints, and time-to-market. Great engineers don’t find the perfect test. They stack imperfect evidence until confidence exceeds the decision threshold. We introduced evidence stacking in this month’s AMA: “Investigate It: How to design tests that actually move your…
We turn late-stage design surprises into a strategic plan by assigning explicit confidence levels, stacking evidence, and using the three-dial model of time, cost, and confidence boost. We show how to work backward from a system test to cheaper steps that drive faster, clearer decisions. • applying the three dials of time, cost, confidence •…
We have a tough, uncertain design decision ahead of us. Everyone agrees we must do something, like extra tests or analysis. We’re not moving forward until we address this critical unknown in our design process. Now we want to do activities that actually move our confidence needle, and know when to stop. Last month, we…
Late-stage design just hit a snag-now comes the moment that separates guesswork from great engineering. We walk through a clear, repeatable method to investigate unexpected failures and make high-impact decisions with confidence. Instead of hunting for a perfect test, we set a confidence target and stack multiple forms of imperfect evidence until we close the…
Teams often use sophisticated risk tools as security blankets when what they really need is decision clarity.