Customers Experience Product Reliability in Real Time

In a customer’s mind, the product works or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t work as expected it has failed. This may or may not be a reliability problem.

A customer or someone using your product brings a set of expectations to the experience. The range of expectations may range from very little to very high functioning, value production, and durability.

Failures are defined by customers.

In part, this is the functional capability, the operating within specifications, and the durability. The customer’s definition of reliability may or may not follow the design specifications.

It is the comparison of what should happen to what does happen. [Read more…]

Benchmarking is the systematic process of observation and analysis.

The evaluation of a project, method or process best practices as performed by recognized industry leader may reveal improvement opportunities for your organization.

Benchmarking may focus on diverse business processes and with both internal and external subjects.

The intent is to understand what makes the subject’s process work well.

Understanding a system that operates well may reveal the elements in your process that may benefit with a change.

Keep in mind that not all best practice processes may apply to your specific situation. (Lapide, 2005) [Read more…]

Image that. Customers say one thing and expect something else.

A customer may provide a detailed and complete reliability specification, then, 6 months into using the product complain it is not reliable enough. [Read more…]

Approaches to Assess Customer Reliability Needs

Just asking a customer how reliable they want your product often provokes an honest answer. The customer, and you most likely, do not want any failures.

Failures are troublesome or in some cases dangerous.

You and your customers realize that not every unit produced will operate over a long and useful life. There is some chance that something will fail. The definition of ‘some’ is often vague. [Read more…]

Embarking on a product development project contains many aspirations, including that the product should work as expected.

The device functions and does so over time. Enough time for the customer to deem the device reliable.

That is one way to approach setting a reliability goal for a project. Estimate what will delight the customer. Set a target for how long without failure your new design function.

The goal provides a focus for the team. [Read more…]