Achieving Product Reliability
A Key to Business Success
ASA-CRC Series on Statistical Reasoning in Science and Society Series

Are you buying a car or smartphone or dishwasher? We bet long-term, trouble-free operation (i.e., high reliability) is among the top three things you look for. Reliability problems can lead to everything from minor inconveniences to human disasters. Ensuring high reliability in designing and building manufactured products is principally an engineering challenge?but statistics plays a key role.

Achieving Product Reliability explains in a non-technical manner how statistics is used in modern product reliability assurance.

Features:

• Describes applications of statistics in reliability assurance in design, development, validation, manufacturing, and field tracking.
• Uses real-life examples to illustrate key statistical concepts such as the Weibull and lognormal distributions, hazard rate, and censored data.
• Demonstrates the use of graphical tools in such areas as accelerated testing, degradation data modeling, and repairable systems data analysis.
• Presents opportunities for profitably applying statistics in the era of Big Data and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) utilizing, for example, the instantaneous transmission of large quantities of field data.

Whether you are an intellectually curious citizen, student, manager, budding reliability professional, or academician seeking practical applications, Achieving Product Reliability is a great starting point for a big-picture view of statistics in reliability assurance.

The authors are world-renowned experts on this topic with extensive experience as company-wide statistical resources for a global conglomerate, consultants to business and government, and researchers of statistical methods for reliability applications.

Contents

Preface, xv
Acknowledgments, xxi
Author Biographies, xxiii

Chapter 1 ▪ Reliability and the Role of Statistics:
An Introduction 1

Chapter 2 ▪ System Reliability Evaluation of a
Conceptual Design 27

Chapter 3 ▪ Product Reliability Development 51

Chapter 4 ▪ Reliability Validation 87

Chapter 5 ▪ Reliability Assurance in Manufacturing 111

Chapter 6 ▪ Field Reliability Tracking 143

Chapter 7 ▪ A Peek into the Future 173

Chapter 8 ▪ Statistical Concepts and Tools for

Product Lifetime Data Analysis 191

MAJOR TAKEAWAYS 214

REFERENCES AND ADDITIONAL RESOURCES 215

INDEX, 217

Dr. Necip Doganaksoy is an associate professor at the School of Business of Siena College, following a 26-year career in industry, mostly at General Electric (GE).

Dr. William Q. Meeker is a professor of statistics and distinguished professor of liberal arts and sciences at Iowa State University and a frequent consultant to industry.

Dr. Gerald J. Hahn is a retired manager of statistics at GE Global Research after a 46-year career at GE.

All three authors are Fellows of the American Society for Quality and the American Statistical Association, elected members of the International Statistical Institute, authors of three or more books, and recipients of numerous prestigious professional awards.