Reliability Engineering is About Answering 3 Questions

Reliability Engineering is About Answering Questions

Engineers solve problems. We optimize solutions.

Engineering starts with a question. The work of engineering is answering those questions. Can we create an antenna with enough range? How can we make a safe autonomous driving car? How much can a delivery drone carry if it has a range of 100 miles?

Reliability engineers are no different. We ask questions and work to answer them. To solve the problems in the pursuit of providing our customers reliable solutions.

In general, there are only a few types of questions a reliability engineer addresses: What will fail, when, and what is the impact of a failure.

The answers are used to design reliable products, optimize supply chains and assembly processes, refine warranty accruals, and identify significant business risks.

1 — What Will Fail?

My favorite way to understand a product is to break it. What can and what can it not do? What happens when it gets wet? How well does it perform when I wear gloves? Etc.

Engineers can solve problems when they know the details of the problem. Knowing how a product fails permits creating a more robust…