Communicating Reliability to Design Engineers

Communicating reliability to design engineers is one tough task. With the exception of the aerospace industry, reliability engineering efforts can at best be compared with newly laid grass sod which has not taken to root yet. The major amount of publicity given to the industries' reliability efforts belongs to product reliability assessment and performance areas. The reliability engineering discipline which really advocates prevention in the design engineering process is not yet well-integrated in the total product creation process.

This paper examines the preceding situation as a “communication” problem among design engineers, reliability engineers and management. It is contended that the reliability engineering process, if properly communicated and organized as discussed, will be a significant expansion of conventional reliability engineering and organizational practices.