the Journal of the
Reliability Analysis Center
RAC is a DoD Information Analysis Center sponsored by the Defense Technical Information Center and operated by IIT Research Institute
Second Quarter 1998
The Status of Reliability Engineering Technology
A report to the IEEE Reliability Society
January 1998
(Copyright IEEE Reliability Society: Reprinted by permission)
Introduction
Reliability engineering is becoming
increasingly important as we all become
increasingly dependent on advanced
technology. Consumers want technology,
and they want technology that works. In
today's society, advanced electronic
equipment is used in telecommunications,
medical equipment, transportation and
similar critical functions. Home
electronics such as cellular phones, and
home computers with access to the
Internet are rapidly becoming as common
as TVs. Offering technology, without
addressing reliability, is the safest way to
put a company out of business. In 1997
consumers in large numbers were happy
because of the availability of inexpensive
access to the Internet but unhappy about
purchasing access to a busy-signal. At the
1997 Annual Reliability and
Maintainability Symposium (RAMS) a
frustrated participant shared his
experience with the poor reliability of the
laptop computers used in his company,
but worse yet, telephone inquiries to the
manufacturer's hotline had resulted in
nothing but ignorant answers such as
"What is reliability?" Reliability
engineering addresses our need to rely on
technology and advanced equipment.
In traditional reliability textbooks,
"reliability" is defined in a most
quantitative fashion such as the
"probability that a product will perform
its intended function (without failure) for
a given period of time under stated
conditions." In today's world, reliability
engineering has evolved to include a
variety of other issues, some of which are
more qualitative than quantitative, and
some more difficult to measure the
success of than others. Current trends
suggest that