Larry George
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Larry has 11 years of teaching and training experience at universities such as Texas A&M and companies such as Applied Materials. He worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for 11 years, and he has more than 20 years of field reliability experience, including employment, contracts, consulting, and free service.

Work pressure and lack of age-at-failure data forced Larry to derive age-specific field reliability estimators from "ships and returns" data. Fortunately, generally accepted accounting principles require population ships and returns, so everybody can estimate their products' and parts' reliability and failure rate functions and do something about them, if necessary.

Larry wants to show you how to estimate product and part field reliabilities (what really happens). He wants you to use this reliability information and to measure progress manifested by field service cost savings and reduced uncertainty. If you send him field data such as ships and returns, then he will send back nonparametric estimates of field reliability and failure rate functions, along with diagnostic information and applications, free.

In 1998 he received the Allen Chop Reliability Award from the American Society for Quality's Reliability Division. In 2000 the ASQ elected him as a Fellow, for contributions to and publications in field reliability.

He is a member of the ASQ, American Statistical Association, and International Federation of Operations Research and Management Science.

Since 1991 Larry has been doing business as Problem Solving Tools to provide software, service and training in reliability, logistics, statistics and operations research. Clients include:

• Computers-Apple, Sun Microsystems, WD, Seagate, Quantum, Granite Microsystems, Xycom, HP Commercial Printer, Wyse, Dell
• Semiconductor-AMD, Edwards High Vacuum, Applied Materials
• Medical-Uniphase, SP, MG, Pryon, Target, Enact, LifeScan, IEC, Infimed, GE, Abbott Diagnostics
• Electronics-HP laser, Quantum, Analogic, Square D, Trident, NCR, William's Games, Branson Ultrasonics, Siemens Solar, Schweitzer Engineering Labs, EPRI
• Transportation-Cummins, Wabash, Ford, Chrysler, Lear, Cessna, Lycoming, Triad, Barnes & Reinecke
• Communications-Farallon, Nortel, Motorola, Raynet, Lucent, Cisco, Brocade, Shoreline
• Sensors and Security-General Monitors, Digital Security Controls, Industrial Scientific

Solutions include:

• Reliability estimates and applications for many clients
• Optimal dilution and white blood cell discriminant analysis for hemoanalyzers
• Statistical tests of deterministic semiconductor and respirometer specifications
• Actuarial forecasts and stock level recommendations for auto parts.
• Fault Tree Diagnostic and Optimal Test Sequence for NASA's Space Station
• Statistical analysis of Firestone tire reliability, with recommendations
• Credible age-specific reliability predictions based on observed field reliability and incorporating redundancy and repair
• Life cycle cost comparisons for alternative vendors
• Reliability based diagnostics that isolated the root cause of EEPROMs losing their memories
• Optimal opportunistic replacement and build policies for repairable systems