Reliability engineering not only helps organizations produce more reliable products, but it also informs maintenance teams on how to maintain them to increase MTBF (mean time between failures) and asset life span.
Reliability (in reliability engineering) is a term used to describe the ability of a component or system to meet certain performance standards over a certain period of time, assuming normal operating conditions.
In other words, if we have two systems that operate under the same conditions, the one that works longer with less major hiccups is the more reliable one.
Since no one can predict the future and guarantee that a product won’t fail for exactly X hours of use, calculating reliability comes with a dose of uncertainty that is expressed in the form of probability.
Among other things, we can use reliability calculation to estimate what is the chance that a system will work properly after x hours or days of use. Naturally, the reliability of any system will be high in the beginning and decline over time.
Reliability Engineering vs Durability
Reliability is often confused with durability. While the concepts are similar, they should not be used interchangeably.
Durability can be defined as the ability of a physical product to remain functional, without requiring excessive maintenance or repair, when faced with the challenges of normal operation over its design lifetime.
The main difference between reliability and durability is that durability is mostly concerned with how long a product can last despite the breakdowns it survives, while reliability is trying to reduce the overall number and frequency of those breakdowns.
Want to learn more? Tonex offers a large selection of Reliability Engineering Training courses –training that benefits most engineering specializations including mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and applied statistics.
Additionally, these courses are excellent for product managers, project managers and production supervisors or anyone else who wants to learn the foundation of reliability engineering through hands-on activities and directed classroom discussion.
Courses offered include:
Reliability Engineering 101 (2 days)
Software Reliability Training (4 days)
Reliability Engineering Principles Training for Managers (3 days)
Risk and Reliability Engineering Training (3 days)
For more information, questions, comments, contact us.