Robustness Development and Reliability Growth: Value-Adding Strategies for New Products and Processes

Chapter 8. Reliability Growth and Testing

The development of robustness in design concepts is a major step toward achieving higher reliability in a new product. However, time can be a scarce resource. Certain failure modes may not be identified, and critical design parameters may not be optimized or implemented properly. Prioritization in development can result in the probability that some problems may not be prevented. Many problems in products under development may not be identified until prototypes of production-intent designs are subjected to rigorous testing.

During the design and production preparation phases, when the time remaining to product launch is short, it is necessary to find problems fast and correct them. The challenge is to ...