Cost reduction, enhanced business performance, and control over failure are the primary goals of any business. Site reliability engineering or SRE, a sub-function of systems engineering, is the scientific discipline that can help achieve these goals. It asserts that all the systems or components function correctly under a given set of conditions. When it comes to a team’s performance, it requires complex and knowledge-based learning of the reliability principles for the team to function with agility.
Benefits of SRE
Due to its objectives of cost reduction and better business performance, reliability engineering has many benefits for any business. Some of them are:
- Forms a basis for failure-free performance under set conditions
- Increased production equipment reliability
- Enhanced customer satisfaction due to timely delivery
- Overall improved business performance
- Reduced costs and higher profits
Though reliability has been in use for more than a century, SRE now focuses on understanding the physics of failure of engineered systems and plants. Here are the principles that it follows.
Control of Failure to Reduce Costs
Businesses function with the primary purpose of making money. Those who have invested their time and money in the business expect to make financial gains from it. Reducing costs is one way of enhancing profits. The team needs to make sure that they control and reduce costs.
Reliability engineering helps the team analyze the systems, processes, and equipment to determine the output they can produce under a given set of conditions. This helps in adjustments to optimize productivity using the same systems, processes, and equipment which results in lower costs.
Failure-Free Team Performance
For things that cannot be repaired, reliability is the amount of time that the equipment or system can function without failure under a given set of conditions. This means your team can rely on the system to work for a foreseeable amount of time before its performance diminishes or dissipates completely.
For things that you can repair, reliability of the amount of time that the system or equipment will perform better before it needs repair. This helps forecast output and thus enhances dependability on systems.
On-Time Delivery
With reliability comes on-time delivery. This means satisfied customers. Also, increased production results in timely dispatch and high-quality products. One of the key business goals is to ensure customer satisfaction. This can be achieved by delivering products that do not fail early or have warranty problems. It enhances the team’s agility.
Reduces Cost of System Failure
System failure is the highest cost that can impact productivity. Not only does it put a stop to production, but it also incurs additional costs to restore it. This means a higher cost of production and delayed production. Reliability engineering is the key to this problem as it helps predict the reliability of the system based on real-time production data. The team can, therefore, make the necessary adjustments to avoid system failure.
Reliability Numbers
Reliability statistics on their own fail to stimulate, but they can easily be expressed in monetary terms, which springs a lot of interest. The cost of unreliability can motivate the team to take the necessary corrective action. Intelligent solutions that minimize the expense of corrective steps are a result of this process.
Teams are under constant pressure to improve performance. SRE is a tool that provides both quantitative and qualitative connotations to the system, thus enhancing performance.