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8.
Assessing Product Reliability
8.1. Introduction 8.1.1. Why is the assessment and control of product reliability important?
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| Reliability is "quality changing over time" |
The everyday usage term "quality of a product" is loosely taken to mean its inherent degree of excellence. In industry, this is made more precise by defining quality to be "conformance to requirements at the start of use". Assuming the product specifications adequately capture customer requirements, the quality level can now be precisely measured by the fraction of units shipped that meet specifications. |
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| A motion picture instead of a snapshot | But how many of these units still meet specifications after a week of operation? Or after a month, or at the end of a one year warranty period? That is where "reliability" comes in. Quality is a snapshot at the start of life and reliability is a motion picture of the day-by-day operation. Time zero defects are manufacturing mistakes that escaped final test. The additional defects that appear over time are "reliability defects" or reliability fallout. | ||
| Life distributions model fraction fallout over time | The quality level might be described by a single fraction defective. To describe reliability fallout a probability model that describes the fraction fallout over time is needed. This is known as the life distribution model. | ||
