An overview of designing experiments for reliability data

Abstract

The reliability of products and processes will become increasing important in the near future. One definition of reliability is “quality over time.” Customers increasing will make their purchasing decisions on how long they can expect their products and processes to deliver high quality results. As a result, there will be increasing demands for manufacturers to design appropriate experiments to improve reliability. This paper begins with a review of the current practice for planning reliability experiments. It then reviews some recent work that takes into proper account the experimental protocol. A basic issue is that most reliability engineers have little training in planning experiments while most experimental design experts have little background in reliability data.