Product Maturity 1

2Maturity

2.1. Context

Any product goes through a number of industrial phases throughout its lifetime; this is known as the product lifecycle. Chronologically, these phases can be listed as follows:

• – product specification, conducted by the system manufacturer or the end user;
• – product design, conducted by the equipment manufacturer;
• – product manufacturing, conducted by the equipment manufacturer;
• – product integration, conducted by the system manufacturer;
• – product operation, conducted by the end user.

These various stages are illustrated in Figure 2.1 below.

Figure 2.1. Phases of the product lifecycle. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/bayle/maturity1.zip

All of these stages have the potential to produce defects that are often specific to each of them. These defects will potentially generate failures during the operational life of the product with the end user.

The specification stage runs the risk of generating:

• – youth failures, as a result of failures that occur early on in the product lifecycle because a specification has been poorly met, understood or interpreted;
• – premature aging failures, for example, as a result of a performance specification that is much lower than necessary for the product;
• – catastrophic failures due to the lack of specifications on the operational constraints that the product will be subjected to.

The design stage ...