This is the first annual survey to find what you recommend for those preparing for the ASQ CRE exam.
See the full list of reliability references for the CRE exam, for reliability and maintenance engineers at Accendo Reliability.
As a reliability engineer you may have wondered which references are the most useful. Or as an accomplished CRE you may have been asked for recommendations. Either way, thanks for contributing to the:
Annual ASQ CRE Exam Recommended References Survey
The Typeform powered survey open in December 2015 enjoyed 78 unique visits and while not everyone completed the survey, we did get many responses. Average response time was 2 minutes and 47 seconds, which was twice as long as expected. Thanks for putting some thought into your responses.
Unnecessary to Essential Scoring
The first set of questions as you to rank five references as from 1. Unnecessary to 5. Essential. In short which references do you plan to take with you (or recommend) for the exam.
The CRE Primer from the Quality Council of Indiana and Practical Reliability Engineering by O’Conor & Kleyner with an 4.08 and 4.09 average score, respectively top the list or recommended references.
A good statistics textbook and the Handbook of Reliability Engineering and Management with average scores of 3.50 and 3.36, respectively, are our collective third and fourth recommendations.
Juran’s Quality Handbook with an average score of 2.83 was not seen as essential.
Score Reference
4.09 Practical Reliability Engineering
4.08 CRE Primer
3.50 a good statistics textbook
3.36 Handbook of Reliability Engineering and Management
Recommendations to Drop
The next question asked which of the five references should be dropped from the list. In short, which would you not recommend?
Jus under half of respondents listed a title to drop. In order of frequency they are:
17% Handbook of Reliability Engineering and Management
8% none
8% CRE Primer
4% A good statistics book
4% Applied Reliability by Tobias (not on list, so this might be a recommendation)
In general, it appears the older text, 2nd edition published in 1996, the Handbook of Reliability Engineering and Management is not highly recommended. Reluctantly, I’ll drop it from the list. It was my first general book on reliability engineering and I knew and worked with one of the authors (Dick Moss).
Recommendations to Add
This question enjoy responses, sometimes multiple responses, by nearly two thirds of respondents. We do like our references. Here are the recommended additions to the reference list in order of frequency of mention:
12% CRE Handbook by Benbow & Broome [ed. full title is The Certified Reliability Engineer Handbook, 2nd edition]
8% Reliability Statistics by Dovich
And one person each recommended adding the following:
Practical Engineering, Process, and Reliability Statistics by Durivage
Reliability Engineering Handbook, v 1 & 2, by Dimitri
Weibull [ed. maybe? The New Weibull Analysis Handbook by Abernathy]
Some book on PoF [ed. any recommendations here?]
Applied Reliability by Tobias and Trindade
Design for Reliability by Crowe & Feinberg
How to Analyze Reliability Data by Nelson
One person commented that the list was good and recommended using one book’s index for all the references. Just add the other book’s page numbers for each index listing in pencil.
Based on the survey we will add the The Certified Reliability Engineer Handbook, 2nd edition to the recommended list.
On the Accendo Reliability site we’ve built a listing of books (many of which are on my bookshelf) and the ASQ CRE Recommended Reading list in particular. The list today is just what I typically recommend, yet I know there is a lot of experience out there.
You also may find the next Accendo Reliability Webinar, titled, 
CRE preparation notes