The last post in this series dealt with the design team, and the influence that team has on the product reliability process. This post will turn to product development and design managers, again looking at the role of that position in relation to product reliability. The series of posts on reliability participants will continue after today’s post with the roles of quality and reliability engineers and managers.

1. f m sre liabilit y.co m
http://www.fmsreliability.co m/educatio n/pro duct-reliability-participants-part-2/
Product Reliability Participants part 2
Fred
Product Reliability Participants within an Organization
T he last post in this series dealt with the design team, and the inf luence that team has on the product reliability
process. T his post will turn to product development and design managers, again looking at the role of that
position in relation to product reliability. T he series of posts on reliability participants will continue af ter today’s
post with the roles of quality and reliability engineers and managers.
Design Managers
Product development and design team managers provide the prioritization and resources that enable the
design team to create a new product. A primary role related to reliability is the reinf orcement of the importance
of reliability by ensuring the use of suitable data and inf ormation f or each decision under f ull consideration of
the inf luence various options have on the product’s reliability perf ormance. For example, when considering two
power supply options, the capabilities of the supplies such as weight, power output, and stability, along with
cost, may dominate the decision of which option to incorporate into the design. T he consideration of reliability
here includes whether either or both options meet the reliability goal allocation.
Another consideration is the tradeof f between cost and expected cost of f ield f ailures. If one product has a
markedly higher expected f ailure rate than another it may cost more in warranty expenses and customer
dissatisf action than the other option. Many design managers encourage design tradeof f calculations related to
perf ormance, cost, and time to market. It is an additional duty to require f ull consideration of reliability f or
nearly all decisions made during development.
Consider the f ollowing example. In a product development team meeting, a design team manager listened to a
report on an early reliability prediction of the design. It was broken down by group, within the team: display,
motherboard, power supply, etc. T he f irst report indicated that the power supply was the weakest link or the
most likely element to f ail. So, at the design team manager asked the power supply team lead to do something
about the low reliability and develop a plan to tackle the issue at the next week’s meeting.
Each week the team f ocused on the element that limited the product reliability as being the weakest link. T he
team considered tradeof f s between cost and reliability. T he team made steady progress and the leads learned
to prepare a plan, in case the prediction tagged their area as the weakest link.
T he lesson here is that with a little reliability inf ormation and the simple question, “What are you going to do to
improve your reliability?” the team’s f ocus on product reliability enhanced the design and its reliability
perf ormance.