Reliability Engineering

5Product Development

To ensure acceptable product reliability, an organization must follow certain practices during the product development process. These practices impact reliability through the selection of parts (materials), product design, manufacturing, assembly, shipping and handling, operation, maintenance, and repair. Best practices for reliability, listed below and described in this book, dictate that the organization should:

• Define realistic product reliability requirements determined by factors including the targeted life cycle application conditions and performance expectations. The product requirements should consider the customer's needs and the manufacturer's capability to meet those needs.
• Define the product life-cycle conditions by assessing relevant manufactur­­ing, assembly, storage, handling, shipping, operating, and maintenance conditions.
• Ensure that the supply-chain participants have the capability to produce the parts (materials) and services necessary to meet the final reliability objectives.
• Select parts (materials) that have sufficient quality and are capable of delivering the expected performance and reliability in the application.
• Identify the potential failure modes, failure sites, and failure mechanisms by which the product can be expected to fail.
• Design to the process capability (i.e., the quality level that can be controlled in manufacturing and assembly), considering the potential failure modes, failure sites, and failure mechanisms, obtained ...