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Reliability and stupidity

mistakes in reliability engineering and how to avoid them

R.W.A. Barnard    Lambda Consulting, Pretoria, South Africa

Abstract

The discipline of reliability engineering has not kept pace with modern technology. Many ideas on reliability engineering are today no longer relevant, and some reliability engineering activities are even fundamentally flawed. For example, many engineers believe that all parts have failure rates, making product failure inevitable. While this statement may be correct in theory, it is totally irrelevant in the real world. As a result of many misleading or even erroneous assumptions, reliability engineering evolved into a discipline where many “stupid” activities are practiced every day. This chapter ...

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