This book addresses the needs of electronic design engineers, reliability engineers, and their respective managers, stressing a pragmatic viewpoint rather than a vigorous mathematical presentation.

This book is intended for the engineer or engineering student with little or no prior background in reliability. Its purpose is to provide the background material and guidance necessary to comprehend and carry out all the tasks associated with a reliability program from specification generation to final demonstration of reliability achieved. Most available texts on reliability concentrate on the mathematics and statistics used for reliability analysis, evaluation, and demonstration. They are more often suited more for the professional with a heavier mathematical background that most engineers have, and more often than not, ignore or pay short-shrift to basic engineering design and organizational efforts associated with a reliability program. A reliability engineer must be familiar with both the mathematics and engineering aspects of a reliability program. This text: 1. Describes the mathematics needed for reliability analysis, evaluation, and demonstration commensurate with an engineer's background. 2. Provides background material, guidance, and references necessary to the structure and implementation of a reliability program including: • identification of the reliability standards in most common use • how to generate and respond to a reliability specification • how reliability can be increased • the tasks which make up a reliability program and how to judge the need and scope of each; how each is commonly performed; caution and comments about their application.

The revised edition of this book offers an expanded overview of the reliability design of mechanical systems and describes the reliability methodology, including a parametric accelerated life test (ALT) plan, a load analysis, a tailored series of parametric ALTs with action plans, and an evaluation of the final designs to ensure the design requirements are satisfied. It covers both the quantitative and qualitative approaches of the reliability design forming in the development process of mechanical products, with a focus on parametric ALT and illustrated via case studies. This new reliability methodology – parametric ALT should help mechanical and civil engineers to uncover design parameters improving product design and avoiding recalls. Updated chapters cover product recalls and assessment of their significance, modern definitions in reliability engineering, parametric accelerated life testing in mechanical systems, and extended case studies. For this revised edition, one new chapter has been introduced to reflect recent developments in analysis of fluid motion and mechanical vibration. Other chapters are expanded and updated to improve the explanation of topics including structures and load analysis, failure mechanics, design and reliability testing, and mechanical system failure. The broad scope gives the reader an overview of the state-of-the-art in the reliability design of mechanical systems and an indication of future directions and applications. It will serve as a solid introduction to the field for advanced students, and a valuable reference for those working in the development of mechanical systems and related areas.

At an early stage of the development, the design teams should ask questions such as, "How reliable will my product be?" "How reliable should my product be?" And, "How frequently does the product need to be repaired / maintained?" To answer these questions, the design team needs to develop an understanding of how and why their products fails; then, make only those changes to improve reliability while remaining within cost budget. The body of available literature may be separated into three distinct categories: "theory" of reliability and its associated calculations; reliability analysis of test or field data – provided the data is well behaved; and, finally, establishing and managing organizational reliability activities. The problem remains that when design engineers face the question of design for reliability, they are often at a loss. What is missing in the reliability literature is a set of practical steps without the need to turn to heavy statistics. Executing Design for Reliability Within the Product Life Cycle provides a basic approach to conducting reliability-related streamlined engineering activities, balancing analysis with a high-level view of reliability within product design and development. This approach empowers design engineers with a practical understanding of reliability and its role in the design process, and helps design team members assigned to reliability roles and responsibilities to understand how to deploy and utilize reliability tools. The authors draw on their experience to show how these tools and processes are integrated within the design and development cycle to assure reliability, and also to verify and demonstrate this reliability to colleagues and customers.

Vehicle reliability problems continue to be the news because of major vehicle recalls from several manufacturers. This book includes 40 SAE technical papers, published from 2007 through 2010, that describe the latest research on automotive electronics reliability technology. This book will help engineers and researchers focus on the design strategies being used to minimize electronics reliability problems, and how to test and verify those strategies. After an overview of durability, risk assessment, and failure mechanisms, this book focuses on state-of-the-art techniques for reliability-based design, and reliability testing and verification. Topics include: powertrain control monitoring distributed automotive embedded systems model-based design x-by-wire systems battery durability design verification fault tree analysis The book also includes editor Ronald K. Jurgen’s introduction ,“Striving for Maximum Reliability in a Highly Complex Electronic Environment”, and a concluding section on the future of electronics reliability, including networking technology, domain control units, the use of AUTOSAR, and embedded software.

Historically, the reliability growth process has been thought of, and treated as, a reactive approach to growing reliability based on failures "discovered" during testing or, most unfortunately, once a system/product has been delivered to a customer. As a result, many reliability growth models are predicated on starting the reliability growth process at test time "zero", with some initial level of reliability (usually in the context of a time-based measure such as Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF)). Time "zero" represents the start of testing, and the initial reliability of the test item is based on its inherent design. The problem with this approach, still predominant today, is that it ignores opportunities to grow reliability during the design of a system or product, i.e., opportunities to go into reliability growth testing with a higher initial inherent reliability at time zero. In addition to the traditional approaches to reliability growth during test, this book explores the activities and opportunities that can be leveraged to promote and achieve reliability growth during the design phase of the overall system life cycle. The ability to do so as part of an integrated, proactive design environment has significant implications for developing and delivering reliable items quickly, on time and within budget. This book offers new definitions of how failures can be characterized, and how those new definitions can be used to develop metrics that will quantify how effective a Design for Reliability (DFR) process is in (1) identifying failure modes and (2) mitigating their root failure causes. Reliability growth can only occur in the presence of both elements.