Reliability Chapter

Reliability is a design engineering discipline which applies scientific knowledge to assure a product will perform its intended function for the required duration within a given environment. This includes designing in the ability to maintain, test, and support the product throughout its total life cycle. Reliability is best described as product performance over time. This is accomplished concurrently with other design disciplines by contributing to the selection of the system architecture, materials, processes, and components -- both software and hardware; followed by verifying the selections made by thorough analysis and test.