Applied reliability engineering is an engineering discipline for applying scientific know-how to a component, product, plant, or process in order to ensure that it performs its intended function, without failure, for the required time duration in a specified environment.
Applied reliability engineering systems and products are an important element of the world economy and each year billions of dollars are spent to develop, manufacture, operate, and maintain systems and products around the globe.
Consequently, global competition is requiring reliability professionals to work closely with other departments involved in engineering development during the product design and manufacturing phase.
It’s important to understand that applied reliability engineering emphasizes dependability in the lifecycle management of a product, which is the ability of a system or component to function under stated conditions for a specified period of time.
In other words, reliability has two significant dimensions:
- Time
- Stress
A product has to endure for several years of its life and also perform its desired function, despite all the threatening stresses applied to it, such as temperature, vibration, shock, voltage, and other environmental factors.
Reliability engineering involves an iterative process of reliability assessment and improvement, and the relationship between these two aspects is important.
Work on the reliability of a system necessarily involves assessment of that reliability. In some cases the assessment shows that the system is sufficiently reliable. In other cases the reliability is found to be inadequate, but the assessment work reveals ways in which the reliability can be improved.
It is generally agreed that the value of reliability assessment lies not in the figure obtained for system reliability, but in the discovery of the ways in which reliability can be improved.
Want to learn more? Tonex offers Applied Reliability Engineering Training, a 3-day course that covers the concepts, tools, and techniques required for implementing successful reliability engineering.
Applied Reliability Engineering Training course also discusses reliability and maintenance program management, integrated logistics support (ILS), reliability centered maintenance (RCM), FMECA, and FTA.
For more information, questions, comments, contact us.