Reliability and Risk Mitigation Actions

Reliability and Risk Mitigation Actions

Once reliability risks have been identified and analyzed, we have to do something.

Well, not really.

If the risk is acceptable to the stakeholders, then we can simply continue with the current plan and monitor or any new risks or changes in our understanding of the existing risks.

Risk mitigation is a ‘system, process, or investment to control the likelihood or consequence of a risk.’ This is according to the glossary of risk terms in ISO 31000: Enterprise Risk Management. In many cases, the risk is unacceptable and will require mitigation.

Mitigating Unknowns Concerning Risk

At times it is our understanding the elements that comprise a risk that makes it worth mitigating. A new vendor provides a range of unknowns from their process capability to the supplied component’s actual behavior within our design.

The solution here is obvious. Get more information and reassess the risk. Run an experiment, call the vendor with requests for data, or conduct the necessary research.

If we’re not sure how often an item will fail, we’re seeking failure rate information. Life studies that test to failure, literature searches, vendor data, physics of failure models are all viable means to estimate a failure rate.