Acknowledgements
After a lifetime in the engineering industry, it is virtually impossible to name all of the individuals who have contributed to the knowledge gained by the author. In fact, the learning process continues on a daily basis.
I must gratefully acknowledge the encouragement given to me some years ago by Pat O'Connor, who on many occasions urged me to write this book. Within my library of indispensable engineering literature, I assign particular value to the “Vibration Analysis” and “Cooling Techniques” for Electronic Equipment authored by Dave Steinberg. My long-standing association with Dr Michael Pecht and the CALCE Electronic Packaging Center at the University of Maryland has been both educational and inspirational.
At a time when my enthusiasm for solving the riddle of conventional “failure inevitability” as defined by reliability prediction statistics was at its very lowest, Group Captain James Stewart and Ian Knowles of the Ministry of Defence Procurement Executive introduced me to a fundamental and incontrovertible change in paradigm. Simply stated the old paradigm “if it fails no more than an allowable number of times during a given period it is reliable”, must be changed to the new paradigm “if it operates for a given time without failure, it is reliable”. This was the moment at which I fully appreciated that reliability is achieved by failure prevention, not by failure prediction.
In pursuit of the goal of failure prevention I have been privileged to work ...
