An Overview Of Reliability Engineering Principles

H. Paul Barringer, P.E.

Barringer & Associates, Inc.
P. O. Box 3985
Humble, TX 77347-3985

Phone: 281-852-6810
FAX: 281-852-3749

ENERGY WEEK 1996

Organizing Sponsors: API and ASME

Organized by
PennWell Conferences & Exhibitions
Houston, TX
January 29 - February 2, 1996
 An Overview Of Reliability Engineering Principles

H. Paul Barringer, P.E., Barringer & Associates, Inc., P.O. Box 3985, Humble, TX 77347, Phone: 713-852-6810, FAX: 713-852-3749

Abstract

Reliability is the probability of equipment or processes to function without failure when operated correctly for a given interval of time under
stated conditions. Equipment and processes failures waste money on unreliability problems. The business issue of reliability is control of
failures to reduce costs and improve operations by enhancing business performance with affordable levels of reliability. Reliability numbers
by themselves lack motivation for improvements. However, converting unreliability into monetary values, causes numbers to spring to life
and guides actions for making cost effective changes, by using actual plant data for costs and failures. Reliability engineering tools are
discussed which assist plant improvement programs for reducing the high cost of unreliability.

Reliability Definitions Reliability numbers (a value between zero and one) lack a
Reliability has many definitions. For things that cannot be motivation for making business improvements. However,
repaired: Reliability is the duration or probability of failure-free
performance under stated conditions. For things that can be reliability numbers spring to life when converted into monetary
repaired: Reliability is the probability that an item can perform its values expressing the cost of unreliability. Annualizing losses by
intended function for a specified interval under stated conditions. means of the cost of unreliability immediately identifies for
For those who wish simplicity, a single word definition is: everyone the amount of money that can be spent to correct
dependability. reliability problems. Clever solutions minimizing expenditures
for corrections is the basis for hero awards in industry. Throwing
money at reliability problems in the form of hardware and
The Motivation For Improving Reliability software may satisfy the angst, but does little for solving root
Enhancing reliability satisfies customers with on-time delivery of cause(s) of problems/losses for the business enterprise.
products through increased production equipment reliability and
reduced warranty problems from products that fail early. Higher Reliability requirements for businesses change because of
reliability reduces the cost for equipment failures that decrease competitive conditions and business risks. Reliability values are
production and limit gross profits from plants operating at not fixed and immutable, but change with business conditions.
maximum capacity as with commodity products and high demand Different business conditions require use of different reliability
proprietary products. Boosting reliability improves business engineering tools for solving business problems. You dont need
performance. The clear reason for improving reliability is spelled the best reliability in the world for your businessyou just need
with one word: money. an improvement over your fiercest competitor so your business is
the low cost provider. Motivations for reliability improvements
We speak of reliability, but we measure failures. Failures are driven by the cost of unreliability and how unreliability
demonstrate evidence of lack of reliability. Reliability problems affects the bottom line for the business.
are failures, and failures cost money in an economic enterprise.
Failures in most continuous process industries are measured in
Reliability As An Art And Science
downtime for the process. Similarly, cutbacks in output are also
The world became more complicated in the late 1920s and early
failures to achieve the desired economic results from the process
1930s as telephones and electron vacuum tubes grew in demand.
or equipment. Most people comprehend loss of reliability from
Higher demands for these new products required making them
equipment downtime. Fewer people can define when a cutback in
more economically and improving their reliability. These two
output grows into a demonstrated failure. Definition of failure,
new technologies spurred early reliability studies.
which leads to a need for reliability improvements, is a vital:
failures galvanize organizations into action for making
During World War II, airborne radios delivered into remote
improvements.
theaters of war had appalling reliability. Only ~17% of them
worked upon arrival into the battle zone. War efforts also
Funding for reliability improvements must come from the cost of
produced a new weapon of terror--the V-1 rocket. The V-1
unreliability. At the heart of reliability improvements is the need
rocket had a demonstrated reliability of 1 success out of 11
to find affordable business solutions. Good reliability engineering
attempts for a calculated reliability of 9.1%.this was a great
work for business is the never ending search for affordable
result for frontier technology but a terrible success rate
improvements resulting in larger profits by cleverly solving
considering the consumption of limited resources.
nagging problems. Good reliability engineering is not the search
for perfection but rather a search for effective business solutions
Robert Lussor, an electrical engineer, is generally acknowledged as
to failure problems.
the individual who first quantified reliability studies of V-1

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rockets. He used principles learned from the study of electron Many concepts and practical engineering tools are available for
vacuum tube reliability. His studies resulted in Werner Von making reliability decisions. Knowing about reliability tools is
Brauns redesign leading to the V-2 rocket. The V-2 rocket used one thing, but using reliability tools for reducing the high cost of
the principles of redundancy to enhance the rockets reliability. unreliability is what counts for improving plants and businesses.
The V-2 results are written in the history books for a A few reliability engineering tools are described below to
demonstrated reliability improvement program that resulted in the illustrated the breadth of techniques now available:
building of more than 8000 V-2 rocket motors. Acquiring reliability data-Accurate failure data is required for
making good reliability decisions. Many factories, chemical
The Korean War was a war of new technology used in large plants, and refineries have recorded and stored 10 to 20 years of
numbersgas turbines, helicopters, miniature electron vacuum failure data in maintenance information systems. Yet, the cry is
tubes, etc. US Government studies showed $2 of maintenance still the same: Where is my data for making reliability
costs for every $1 of capital costs during the Korean War. High improvements? (Barringer 1995). Most industries are sitting on
maintenance costs led to establishment of reliability requirements the equivalent of a gold mine of data. Industry must educate and
for procurement of military equipment and new MIL-STD train engineers to mine the gold and recognize value in the data
documents. This was a watershed event which established an banks for making reliability improvements.
emerging technology requiring reliability for new equipment and
survivability during field use. Often failure data is viewed as having little value. Engineers have
not been trained how to handle suspensions in the data (i.e., non-
The first text books were written for the emerging field of failures or failures from different failure modes currently under
reliability during the early 1960s as a spin-off of NASA investigation) and failure data often cannot be plotted using
activities for manned space programs. During this period some conventional X-Y plots. Everyone wants to reach into a
claimed NASA could identify every rocket failure but could not competitors data bank for failures thinking the grass is always
correct reliability problems. This embarrassing reliability greener on the other sideit isnt any greener on the other side.
situation improved and use of reliability engineering principles Using plant data for quantifying failure characteristics is
quickly produced higher successes. important because it reflects actual results of procurement
practices, maintenance practices, operating practices, and life
During the 1960s, 70s, and 80s applications of reliability cycle actions in real world conditions. For these reasons, plant
principles were put to work. Performance improved and cost failure data is extremely valuable for projecting paradigm shifts
reduction programs occurred in mainframe computers, gas turbine using new criteria for improvements. Fresh data is acquired
engines, nuclear reactors, electronics, automobiles, and consumer accurately and analyzed rigorously when organizations observe
products using reliability engineering principles. that failure data is actually used for decisions. Failure reporting
and corrective actions systems (FRACAS) are considered an early
During the mid 1990s, continuous process industries such as and important element for initiating improvements by acquiring
petrochemical and refining began active, formal, programs to reliability data correctly and using it in a closed loop system for
improve reliability and decrease costs. Often this occurred when improvements.
old improvement techniques lacked results for a highly
competitive environment. New reliability techniques were Reliability indices-Reliability data can be converted into
required as a paradigm shift for improvements. New reliability uncomplicated, figure-of-merit, performance indices. Consider
programs required training of professional staffs to use the new these indices as yardsticks and not as micrometers. One simple,
engineering techniques which were successful in other industries arithmetic concept, is very useful for getting a grip on reliability
(Barringer 1993). Additionally, management overview programs by using mean times to/between failure derived from the
were launched to educate managers about reliability engineering summation of ages to failure divided by the number of failures
principles to support, encourage, and facilitate training efforts for this is a simple, gross indicator of reliability.
engineers (Barringer 1994).
Reliability is observed when mean time to failure (MTTF) for
Books on the subject of reliability engineering have exploded in non-repairable items or mean time between failure (MTBF) for
sales volumes during the early to mid 1990s. The new books are repairable items is long compared to the mission time. Likewise,
an engineering oriented rebirth of earlier, highly mathematical, small values for mean time indices, compared to the mission time,
concepts. Most recent books use a more easily understood reflect unreliability.
engineering format which discusses principles while putting
statistics into a variety of software packages relying on use of Reciprocals of MTBF or MTTF provide failure rates which are
personal computers to solve complicated equations. Today, commonly displayed in tables for reliability data. Mean time
reliability is perceived as having grown from a central theme of indices are understandable by engineers but failure rates are
improving military projects to concentrate on commercial needs usually better for making calculations.
(Morris 1995).
Accuracy of these simple indices are improved when large
Reliability Engineering Tools numbers of data are screened using well know statistical tools.

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When only a small volume of data is available the data is best Probability plots-The chaos of failure data can be converted into
analyzed using Weibull analysis techniques to arrive at MTBF or straight line plots of time-to-failure against cumulative chances for
MTTF values. the failure. Most engineers need graphical representation of data
to fully understand problems. Without graphs, engineers are
Decision trees-Decision trees are useful for merging the often overwhelmed by the scatter in the data and they lack good,
probability values for success and failure with financial results to graphical tools for plotting data because X-Y facts are not
arrive at the expected monetary result. Decision trees are good available with only age to failure values.
tools for assessing failure uncertainty in accounting terms.
Probability plots are well known to statisticians and other
Decision trees are helpful for engineers and accountants to find a technically skilled personnel in the field of biology and medicine.
common ground for discussing mutual problems. Problems for Probability tools are growing in importance in the field of
engineers involve chances for failure, and problems for reliability with the use of personal computers which generate the
accountants involve expected monetary results from an outcome curves with ease (Fulton 1995a). Weibull probability charts are
of events. This results in a win-win situation for factual the tool of choice for reliability work, because Weibull probability
discussion of a business event to arrive a decisions which are charts often tell about failure modes (how components die, i.e.,
helpful for the business by both engineering and accounting. infant mortality, chance failures, or wearout failure modes). Of
course once important information about failure modes is
Without a mechanism such as decision trees, engineers and identified, then strategies are set for guiding root cause analysis to
accountants consider problems as having deterministic answers solve the true cause of failures rather than wasting time and
rather than probabilistic answers. Unfortunately, discussions money working on symptoms of failures (Abernethy 1993).
about decision trees can become one-sided as accountants have
received some training in the use of decision trees but few Weibull charts are particularly valuable for pointing noses in the
engineers have been involved in their use. Using decision trees for correct direction for finding root causes of problems even with a
reliability efforts provides engineers with a business growth few data points. Larger quantities of data add confidence to the
opportunity and facts about how much money can be spent for decision making process, but at considerable greater expense for
making reliability improvements. acquiring both failures and data. The motivation for using
probability charts is to understand failure data and reduce costly
Availability concepts, effectiveness equation and costs- failures by appropriate corrective actions.
Availability values are commonly discussed in engineering circles
as the ratio of up-time to total time available. Higher values are Bathtub curves-These simple, highly idealized curves reflect birth
good and lower values are inferior. Unfortunately, many capital problems, chance failures during the useful life phase, and death
equipment decisions are made on availability values without problems for a population of components or assemblies. Seldom
regard for other criteria such as where, what, and how much is does a curve exist for specific devices because generous amounts
best place for investments in a plant equipment. of specific failure data is lacking. The value of bathtub curves lies
in understanding concepts behind different failure rates and the
A better criteria is the effectiveness equation which is seldom medicine required for corrective action.
discussed. The effectiveness equation is the product of
reliability, availability, maintainability, and production capability. Bathtub curves described by (Moubray 1992) and (Smith 1993)
Each properly defined measure in the effectiveness equation has describe how a variety of failure rates are portrayed in graphs to
values between 0 and 1. The effectiveness equation is useful for aid in decisions for reducing costs. The most often cited use of
pointing out opportunities for improvement and is much more these concepts concerns how United Airlines analyzed their
useful than simply discussing a single availability index. failure data in the late 1960s to change maintenance strategies
which resulted in holding maintenance cost almost constant for 10
One direct measure of reliability which is understandable to years during an inflationary period. This feat was accomplished
everyone is the cost of unreliability measured in currency. The by applying the right reliability-centered maintenance (RCM)
cost of unreliability is used less frequently than other values cited medicine to the appropriate age-reliability patterns for aircraft
above. The cost of unreliability has the best opportunity of equipment.
causing decisive action than use of reliability values between 0
and 1. Everyone seems to understand and act on money issues. The thrust of RCM effort is to avoid wasting money in doing
The cost of unreliability galvanizes both engineers and business work without value. Bathtub curves promote RCM objectives
people into action for a common goal in ways not available with by using reliability engineering tools and principles. RCM
simple indices. Merging cost of unreliability with availability and objectives are to: 1) preserve system function, 2) understand how
effectiveness is important because businesses are run for making the loss of system function is connected to the failure by specific
money. Money measures are the best common denominator for failure modes, 3) prioritize the importance of failure modes to
measuring reliability in industry. allocated budgets and resources to the vital few important items,
and 4) apply preventive maintenance (PM) efforts to prevent or

Page 3 of 6
mitigate failure, detect onset of a failure, or discovering hidden
failures so that PM effort is cost effective. Frequently the best block diagram is also the simplest block, and
requires drawing a single block around the entire plant because
Pareto distributions and critical items lists-Working on and this addresses the practical definition for failure. Clearly
correcting the vital few problems that give the largest financial catastrophic failures, which are frequently step functions, get
gain are critical to business results. Separate the vital few reported accurately. However problems of slow deterioration to
problems from the trivial many by ranking the financial impacts a point that is considered failure are seldom reported correctly.
of problems (not the nose counts of incidents as is often preferred Slow deterioration in production is called a cutback. Assignable
by engineers) and then work only on vital problems. causes for cutback failures should be listed and age to failures
recorded along with the cost of unreliability for the problem
Pareto distributions for reliability focus problem solving efforts causing the slow deterioration.
on key problems offering the greatest potential for improvements
using the cost of unreliability. In short, 10-20% of the items on Beginning with the single large block, reliability block diagrams
the list will account for 60-80% of the financial impact. These can be made more complicated (and more realistic) by drawing
few items offer the greatest opportunity for a continuous smaller and smaller blocks to describe failures. Of course this can
improvement process. The visual format of the ranked cost of be carried to the extreme with block diagrams for each component.
unreliability (not nose counts of problem occurrences) focuses In this manner, the entire process and equipment list can be
attention on solving the largest problem first and reserves the studied for reengineering considerations based on justifiable
nits and lice problems to last place because of their lack of reductions in the cost of unreliability.
bottom line financial impact.
Reliability models realistically assess plant conditions when both
Pareto lists of the cost of unreliability must include parts, labor, actual failure rates and predominate failure modes are included in
expense, and the value of gross margin lost by the business as a the calculation process by use of fault tree analysis. When
result of the unreliability. Unreliability costs must include gross combined with costs, repair times, and chance events of Monte
margin losses when the plant is sold out, and exclude gross Carlo simulations, models are very helpful for demonstrating near
margins when the plant has idle capacity and is under sold. actual operating conditions experienced in a plant. Good
This puts the cost of unreliability into its proper financial simulation models help determine maintenance strategies and
perspective. Lack of including appropriate business costs in the turnaround timing for equipment renewal.
cost of unreliability causes many engineers to make the wrong
decision in promoting improvement projects and justifying Monte Carlo computer simulation models are usually based on
equipment for solving business problems. simple, heuristic rules. Heuristic rules are based on observed
behavior of components or systems. Heuristic rules are easy to
Of course communicating improvement programs to management construct using knowledge based computer systems although
is very important for any reliability improvement program. they cannot anticipate all potential failure events.
Communicate only the vital few items on the Pareto distributions
to keep management apprised for their support by using routine The heartbeat of reliability models is to stimulate creative ideas
progress reports and critical items lists. This requires for solving costly problems and to prevent replication of the same
maintenance and publication of a critical items list. Critical items old problems because weve always done things this way.
are failures or potential failures which significantly affect safety, Reliability models offer a scientific method for studying actions,
operating successes, or cause large repair or replacement costs. responses, and costs in the virtual laboratory of the computer
using actual failure data from existing plants. Models provide a
Management teams are overwhelmed by too much trivial way to search for lowest cost operating conditions by predicting
information on pet projects. Management needs to know the the outcome of conditions, events, and equipment.
vital few problems are being addressed with solutions for
accomplishments and not merely engineering activity. Critical Failure modes effect and fault tree analysis-Failure modes effect
items lists provide details about the vital few problems along with analysis (FMEA) is an analysis tool for evaluating reliability by
plans for solving vital problems, and details of before/after examining expected failure modes to find the effects of failure on
results. The critical items list is effort directed at managing your equipment or systems. FMEA is an inductive tool that starts at
manger by simplifying the continuous improvement list. the bottom level of a system and works its way upward to the
top levels. FMEA searches for potential failures and how failures
Reliability block diagrams-Every plant has equipment and will effect the overall system. FMEA is helpful for finding small
processes failures resulting in a domino effect of more problems. failures that cascade to large problems, areas where fail safe or fail
Drawing appropriate process/equipment blocks to identify key soft devices/methods are needed, secondary failure events, and
elements for which failure data exists is an important event single point failures that cause catastrophic failures. Simple
Reliability block diagrams reduce system complexity into FMEA studies can be enhanced by use of criticality analysis to
simplified models for studying problems and gaining insight into reach FMECA status with more details on the chances for a
means of economic improvements. costly problem to occur.

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 Two other growth phases are needed to achieve good vendor
Fault tree analysis (FTA) is a deductive reliability analysis tool control and good parts control to improve reliability: 1) users
for evaluating reliability driven by top level views of what will must supply vendors with failure data and root causes for failures
fail and searches for root causes of the top level event. FTA because the facts are not available to the suppliers at a reasonable
considers experience and biases such as every time we build a cost, and 2) much equipment must either be derated to achieve
plant for this product we have these types of failures. FTA reliability or higher grade equipment must be initially selected to
provides both reliability assessments and fault probability achieve greater inherent reliability without adding numerous
perspectives. FTA helps look for the likelihood of an undesired spares. A few good vendors with reliable equipment are far better
event occurring and the combined effects of simultaneous non- than numerous vendors with unreliable equipment. Both users
critical events on top level problems. Fault trees are more limited and suppliers must increase their fundamental understanding of
in scope and easier to understand than FMEAs. reliability issues to reach a cost effective balance that results in
the lowest long term cost of ownership.
FMEA and FTA can be used qualitatively or quantitatively.
Also they can be used together to reduce the overall study cost Equipment users must also use reliability qualification tests
and produce answers quickly when both cost and time budgets (RQT) to demonstrate or measure the reliability of equipment.
are tightly constrained. FMEA and FTA tools are best used User must specify reliability needed for equipment, and
during the design and configuration stages of a project when equipment suppliers must know their equipment capability. In
changes for improvements can best be made with the change of a general, both parties in most industries have a wide gap which is
pencil (or a CAD drawing). Production personnel should request bridged by salesmanship on one side and preferential awarding of
using these tools at the design review stage of projects. contracts on the other side. Both issues can be solved by
partnership agreements for mutual advantages.
Design reviews-Assessing reliability of projects during design
phase reviews requires a critical look at equipment details to Thermal analysis (TA)-An important influence on product
determine if reliability has been built into the design for meeting reliability is temperature. Increasing, equipment in all production
performance goals required by the project. Design reviews for facilities is migrating toward electronic devices which are highly
reliability require many different disciplines to view the susceptible to increased failure rates at elevated temperatures.
assessments at the three typical milestones: of 1) initial design, 2) The Arrhenius equation is an excellent tool for scaling failure rates
completion of development (pilot plant) testing, and 3) starting with values given in electronic reference books.
preparation of drawings including process flow drawings.
Specifications for equipment need to address both high and low
Key design review questions look for cost effective answers to: 1) temperatures along with a formal analysis for assessing how
have we predicted with confidence where our failures will occur equipment capabilities will meet required conditions. Dont
and with what frequency, 2) have we engineered maintenance overlook increased failure rates of equipment operating
staffs, turnaround renewal staffs, and will costs meet the project continuously at high temperatures. Many companies are
criteria. If computed facts and figures are available from a design enamored with how well new electronic devices work in test
review, then reliability tools are being wisely used. If answers are environments. The rush to more electronic devices will place more
based on rules-of-thumb that maintenance costs will be ~4-5% of devices in an accelerated aging failure mode.
installed capital, etc., then you have evidence of old problems
once again replicated. Environmental stress screening (ESS)-Four strong stress actors
substantially influence planning for ESS: 1) thermal cycling, 2)
Vendor and parts control-Supplier partnerships are bringing a vibrations, 3) corrosion, and 4) number of stress cycles. These
refreshing view for controlling quality and grade of equipment. strong stresses are accompanied by many lesser conditions which
Users and suppliers with strong commitments to partnership reduce reliabilityparticularly when strong stresses are
agreements follow a rocky road during the first two to three years accompanied by interaction influences of lesser stresses. Each
of the relationship. Fortunately rocky roads are leading toward a industry and plant have unique stress conditions to be examined.
mutual benefitlike two, young, newly-weds working out their
agreements for their mutual benefits. Experience now shows many plant outages are caused by non-
rotating equipment. Non-rotating equipment reliability problems
Net result of partnership agreements have shown: 1) fewer have always existed but were hidden by larger outages from
numbers of equipment models are being used with mutual effort rotating equipmentnow most rotating equipment losses have
to solve the old nagging problems, 2) factual discussions are been solved. Many plant outages today are clearly due to
underway concerning failure modes and efforts to build insufficient ESS testing for the four strong stresses destroying
robustness into products (from the supplier), and 3) plant reliability. It is now time to maintain basic rotating
improvements are occurring in operating practices (from the end equipment programs and start new programs for improving
user) which avoids destruction of good equipment. reliability by emphasizing ESS tests.

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Few specific conditions can be given for the corrective action of the job of maintenance is to fix them. Policies are needed to
ESS problems because each case is different. One situation is achieve the teamwork effort for controlling our cost of
clearits time to seriously regard ESS problems as a primary unreliability.
source of downtime and equipment outages in most continuous
process industries. Solutions for ESS problems will not be simple When reliability policies are in place, then reliability audits
or inexpensive. (similar to financial and quality audits) are possible. Reliability
audits ask: Is the organization doing things right to make
Reliability growth monitoring-Most equipment needs growth in improvements and have problems, conflicts, and errors been
MTTF which occurs through the continuous improvement effort. reduced. The main objective of a reliability audit is demonstration
Reliability growth usually occurs from many minor, low cost, of continuous improvement by reducing the cost of unreliability.
improvements. Growth curves are usually log-log curves of Management has the responsibility for both policy and audits.
cumulative MTBF or cumulative failures versus cumulative time.
Log-log plots are used because the cumulative data usually returns Benchmarking reliability-Benchmarking finds and studies the
a straight line which easily shows deviations (either good or bad best world-class organizations with reliability standards.
results) from the trend line.
A recent reliability benchmarking study (Criscimagna 1995)
Goals can be set for reliability improvements and management can shows the following list of important reliability tasks performed
monitor the results with one glance at a chart. Seldom does one by companies in their benchmark study:
individual or one single department make big breakthroughs for
reliability, and a team effort is most frequently required. Tool Used % Companies Involved
Reliability growth curves shows progress of the improvement FRACS 88.3
team and concentrating on correcting the vital few problems gives Design Review 83.8
rapid growth curves when producing the largest results. Sub/Vendor Control 72.1
Generally improvements follow the typical test (or operate), Parts Control 71.2
analyze, and fix (TAAF) methodology. FMEA/FMECA 68.5
RQT 70.3
When the growth curve format is used for cumulative failures, it is Predictions 62.2
easy to forecast the time interval until the next failure will occur. TAAF 59.5
This alone is a good reason for predicting maintenance budgets for Thermal Analysis 58.6
breakdown events and making plans to minimize losses. As with ESS 54.1
all forecasts, they will be in errorthe question is how much Benchmark studies allow adjustments to internal systems to meet
error. Fortunately, software is available to make these answers or exceed the best standards found by the benchmark. Often
easier (Fulton 1995b). benchmark studies are based on consultants collecting data from a
variety of sources and assembling the data into statistics so that
Reliability policies- The objective of a reliability policy is to plants under study have a goal to meet or exceed. Each plant must
prevent unreliability problems early in the formative stage by assess local conditions to determine which benchmarked
channeling corporate efforts to make things happen according to a reliability tools are appropriate for use.
plan rather than reacting to events. Policy statements signed and
implemented by leaders of organizations are in a state of Summary
development today. Reliability policies are evolutionary We talk about reliability but we deal with failures which add to
progressions from other documents within a company which are the cost of doing business. Businesses cannot afford too little
driven by economics and common sense. Reliability policies reliability nor too much reliability. The cost of unreliability must
must fit into and support other corporate policies for quality, be engineered and controlled.
safety, risk assessment, and financial returns. Reliability policies
must address life-time-costs of potential actions in the use of Many new reliability tools are available for use. Many new
equipment and processes for manufacturing of the companys books on the subject are available. Staffs must be trained in the
products. use of new tools to gain a competitive advantage for businesses
willing to invest in increasing skills to reduce costs. Reliability in
Reliability policy development is at the same point safety many ways is a pay me now or pay me later situation. Cutting
policies were 50 years ago, 40 years ago for quality policies, and edge companies are using these new tools cost effectively. Can
10 years ago for environmental policies. Reliability policy is your business wait to gain an advantage?
simply a money issue worthy of corporate communication effort.
The responsibility for reliability policies lies clearly with top
References
management to display leadership and set reliability policy as a
Abernethy, Dr. Robert B., 1993, The New Weibull Handbook,
serious effort for making cost improvements in both equipment
Self published, North Palm Beach, FL, Phone: 407-842-4082.
and processes. This effort is required to breakdown the walls
that exist and to erase the view that production breaks things and

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Barringer, H. Paul, 1993, Reliability Engineering Principles,
Self published, Humble, TX, Phone: 713-852-6810.

Barringer, H. Paul, 1994, Management Overview: Reliability

Engineering Principles, Self published, Humble, TX, Phone:
713-852-6810.

Barringer, H. Paul, and Weber, David P., 1995, Where Is My

Data For Making Reliability Improvements, Hydrocarbons
Processing Magazine 4th International Reliability Conference,
Houston, TX, November 15-17, 1995.

Criscimagna, Ned H., 1995, Benchmarking Commercial

Reliability Practices, Reliability Analysis Center, Rome, NY.

Fulton, Wes, 1995a, WeibullSMITH DOS version 6.2 and

WinSMITH version 1.0 for Windows 3.1 and Windows 95,
Fulton Findings, Torrance, CA, Phone: 310-548-6358.

Fulton, Wes, 1995b, VisualSMITH version 2.2, Fulton

Findings, Torrance, CA, Phone: 310-548-6358.

Morris, Seymour and Nicholls, David, et. al., 1995, Reliability

Toolkit: Commercial Practices Editions-A Practical Guide
for Commercial Products and Military Systems Under
Acquisition Reform, Reliability Analysis Center, Rome NY.

Moubray, John, 1992, Reliability-centered Maintenance,

Industrial Press, New York, Pages 12, 217.

Smith, Anthony M., 1993, Reliability-Centered Maintenance,

McGraw-Hill, New York, Pages 36, 44.