Improving Product Reliability and Software Quality, 2nd Edition

Series Editor's Foreword

Engineering systems are becoming more and more complex, with added functions, capabilities and increasing complexity of the systems architecture. Systems modeling, performance assessment, risk analysis and reliability prediction present increasingly challenging tasks. Continuously growing computing power relegates more and more functions to the software, placing more pressure on delivering faultless hardware‐software interaction. Rapid development of autonomous vehicles and growing attention to functional safety brings quality and reliability to the forefront of the product development cycle.

The book you are about to read presents a comprehensive and practical approach to reliability engineering as an integral part of the product design process. Various pieces of the puzzle, such as hardware reliability, physics of failure, FMEA, product validation and test planning, reliability growth, software quality, lifecycle engineering approach, supplier management and others fit nicely into a comprehensive picture of a successful reliability program.

Despite its obvious importance, quality and reliability education is paradoxically lacking in today's engineering curriculum. Few engineering schools offer degree programs or even a sufficient variety of courses in quality or reliability methods. Therefore, a majority of the quality and reliability practitioners receive their professional training from colleagues, engineering seminars, publications and technical books. ...