A common refrain from managers and engineers alike (as it relates to making or maintaining reliable products) is:

How do we know if we are there yet?

This makes reliability engineering sound like driving a car, sanding a piece of wood, mowing the lawn, or any other endeavour where efforts perfectly align with progress.

This doesn’t work for reliability. Reliability can be easy to achieve, but it needs to be thought about in a different way. And when you do, everything becomes easier. [Read more…]