The design and manufacture of reliable products is a major challenge for engineers and managers. This book arms technical managers and engineers with the tools to compete effectively through the design and production of reliable technology products.

Traditionally, the way to test a product's reliability was to build it--and then try to break it. As systems and technologies improved, TAAF (Test, Analyze and Fix) methodologies were developed and adopted. In today's global economy, with its short, technologically-intense product life cycles, TAAF cannot suffice. Reliability can no longer be a step or a series of steps in product development; it is something that needs to be acknowledged up front and built into the product from its very conception. Reliability, in other words, must be 'designed in.' Product developers now have many tools--software and hardware--at their disposal for building reliability in from the get go. From the organizational point of view, what better way to design in reliability than to make designers themselves responsible for the reliability of their designs? As "Mike Silverman" explains in "How Reliable is Your Product?," this is why the role of the reliability engineer is changing to one of mentor. Product developers are now responsible for going out and finding the best testing tools and then training the designers on their use, so that designers factor and build in reliability at every stage of product design. Mike has focused on reliability throughout his 25-year career, and has observed the position of reliability in the organization evolve. In this book, he condenses his expertise and experience into a volume of immense practical worth to the engineering and engineering management communities including designers, manufacturing engineers and reliability/quality engineers. Among other things, Mike discusses how reliability fits, or should fit, within the product design cycle. He provides a high-level overview of reliability techniques available to engineers today. He lucidly discusses the design of experiments and the role of failure management. With case studies and narratives from personal experience, Mike discusses optimal ways to utilize different reliability techniques. He highlights common errors of judgment, missteps and sub-optimal decisions that are often made within organizations on the path to total reliability. With"How Reliable is Your Product?" "Mike Silverman" has delivered what few have done before--a comprehensive yet succinct overview of the field of reliability engineering and testing. Engineers and engineering managers will find much in this book of immediate, practical value.

The authoritative guide to the effective design and production of reliable technology products, revised and updated While most manufacturers have mastered the process of producing quality products, product reliability, software quality and software security has lagged behind. The revised second edition of Improving Product Reliability and Software Quality offers a comprehensive and detailed guide to implementing a hardware reliability and software quality process for technology products. The authors – noted experts in the field – provide useful tools, forms and spreadsheets for executing an effective product reliability and software quality development process and explore proven software quality and product reliability concepts. The authors discuss why so many companies fail after attempting to implement or improve their product reliability and software quality program. They outline the critical steps for implementing a successful program. Success hinges on establishing a reliability lab, hiring the right people and implementing a reliability and software quality process that does the right things well and works well together. Designed to be accessible, the book contains a decision matrix for small, medium and large companies. Throughout the book, the authors describe the hardware reliability and software quality process as well as the tools and techniques needed for putting it in place. The concepts, ideas and material presented are appropriate for any organization. This updated second edition: Contains new chapters on Software tools, Software quality process and software security. Expands the FMEA section to include software fault trees and software FMEAs. Includes two new reliability tools to accelerate design maturity and reduce the risk of premature wearout. Contains new material on preventative maintenance, predictive maintenance and Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) to better manage repair cost and unscheduled downtime. Presents updated information on reliability modeling and hiring reliability and software engineers. Includes a comprehensive review of the reliability process from a multi-disciplinary viewpoint including new material on uprating and counterfeit components. Discusses aspects of competition, key quality and reliability concepts and presents the tools for implementation. Written for engineers, managers and consultants lacking a background in product reliability and software quality theory and statistics, the updated second edition of Improving Product Reliability and Software Quality explores all phases of the product life cycle.

The authoritative guide to the effective design and production of reliable technology products, revised and updated While most manufacturers have mastered the process of producing quality products, product reliability, software quality and software security has lagged behind. The revised second edition of Improving Product Reliability and Software Quality offers a comprehensive and detailed guide to implementing a hardware reliability and software quality process for technology products. The authors – noted experts in the field – provide useful tools, forms and spreadsheets for executing an effective product reliability and software quality development process and explore proven software quality and product reliability concepts. The authors discuss why so many companies fail after attempting to implement or improve their product reliability and software quality program. They outline the critical steps for implementing a successful program. Success hinges on establishing a reliability lab, hiring the right people and implementing a reliability and software quality process that does the right things well and works well together. Designed to be accessible, the book contains a decision matrix for small, medium and large companies. Throughout the book, the authors describe the hardware reliability and software quality process as well as the tools and techniques needed for putting it in place. The concepts, ideas and material presented are appropriate for any organization. This updated second edition: Contains new chapters on Software tools, Software quality process and software security. Expands the FMEA section to include software fault trees and software FMEAs. Includes two new reliability tools to accelerate design maturity and reduce the risk of premature wearout. Contains new material on preventative maintenance, predictive maintenance and Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) to better manage repair cost and unscheduled downtime. Presents updated information on reliability modeling and hiring reliability and software engineers. Includes a comprehensive review of the reliability process from a multi-disciplinary viewpoint including new material on uprating and counterfeit components. Discusses aspects of competition, key quality and reliability concepts and presents the tools for implementation. Written for engineers, managers and consultants lacking a background in product reliability and software quality theory and statistics, the updated second edition of Improving Product Reliability and Software Quality explores all phases of the product life cycle.

Are you buying a car or smartphone or dishwasher? We bet long-term, trouble-free operation (i.e., high reliability) is among the top three things you look for. Reliability problems can lead to everything from minor inconveniences to human disasters. Ensuring high reliability in designing and building manufactured products is principally an engineering challenge–but statistics plays a key role. Achieving Product Reliability explains in a non-technical manner how statistics is used in modern product reliability assurance. Features: Describes applications of statistics in reliability assurance in design, development, validation, manufacturing, and field tracking. Uses real-life examples to illustrate key statistical concepts such as the Weibull and lognormal distributions, hazard rate, and censored data. Demonstrates the use of graphical tools in such areas as accelerated testing, degradation data modeling, and repairable systems data analysis. Presents opportunities for profitably applying statistics in the era of Big Data and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) utilizing, for example, the instantaneous transmission of large quantities of field data. Whether you are an intellectually curious citizen, student, manager, budding reliability professional, or academician seeking practical applications, Achieving Product Reliability is a great starting point for a big-picture view of statistics in reliability assurance. The authors are world-renowned experts on this topic with extensive experience as company-wide statistical resources for a global conglomerate, consultants to business and government, and researchers of statistical methods for reliability applications.

This book introduces and explains the parametric accelerated life testing (ALT) methodology as a new reliability methodology based on statistics, to help avoid recalls of products in the marketplace. The book includes problems and case studies to help with reader comprehension. It provides an introduction to reliability design of the mechanical system as an alternative to Taguchi’s experimental methodology and enables engineers to correct faulty designs and determine if the targeted product reliability is achieved. Additionally, it presents a robust design methodology of mechanical products to withstand a variety of loads. This book is intended for engineers of many fields, including industrial engineers, mechanical engineers, and systems engineers.

This unique and innovative book explains how to improve your maintenance and reliability performance at the plant level by changing the organizations culture. It is specifically intended for middle managers in the manufacturing and process industries. This book demystifies the concept of organizational culture and links it with the eight elements of change: leadership, work process, structure, group learning, technology, communication, interrelationships, and rewards. If you want to break the cycle of failed improvement programs and instead use cultural change to help make significant and lasting improvements in plant performance, this book will show you how. Features Explains in-depth the eight elements of change and how they relate to cultural change. Discusses cultural change with a reliability focus.Includes a PowerPoint presentation with audio on the enclosed CD-ROM, together with a web survey model, the Web of Organizational Change.

Our modern view of quality is a multifaceted conglomeration of probability, planning, and perception. Although warranties are important first as an estimate and then as a measurement of reliability, most books on reliability and quality relegate the topic of warranties to a single chapter. Today's engineering student needs an integrated view that c

The overwhelming majority of a software system’s lifespan is spent in use, not in design or implementation. So, why does conventional wisdom insist that software engineers focus primarily on the design and development of large-scale computing systems? In this collection of essays and articles, key members of Google’s Site Reliability Team explain how and why their commitment to the entire lifecycle has enabled the company to successfully build, deploy, monitor, and maintain some of the largest software systems in the world. You’ll learn the principles and practices that enable Google engineers to make systems more scalable, reliable, and efficient—lessons directly applicable to your organization. This book is divided into four sections: Introduction—Learn what site reliability engineering is and why it differs from conventional IT industry practices Principles—Examine the patterns, behaviors, and areas of concern that influence the work of a site reliability engineer (SRE) Practices—Understand the theory and practice of an SRE’s day-to-day work: building and operating large distributed computing systems Management—Explore Google's best practices for training, communication, and meetings that your organization can use

Reliability is one of the most important attributes for the products and processes of any company or organization. This important work provides a powerful framework of domain-independent reliability improvement and risk reducing methods which can greatly lower risk in any area of human activity. It reviews existing methods for risk reduction that can be classified as domain-independent and introduces the following new domain-independent reliability improvement and risk reduction methods: Separation Stochastic separation Introducing deliberate weaknesses Segmentation Self-reinforcement Inversion Reducing the rate of accumulation of damage Permutation Substitution Limiting the space and time exposure Comparative reliability models The domain-independent methods for reliability improvement and risk reduction do not depend on the availability of past failure data, domain-specific expertise or knowledge of the failure mechanisms underlying the failure modes. Through numerous examples and case studies, this invaluable guide shows that many of the new domain-independent methods improve reliability at no extra cost or at a low cost. Using the proven methods in this book, any company and organisation can greatly enhance the reliability of its products and operations.