Introducing reliability and maintainability in engineering and technology

Abstract

Engineering technology education is traditionally concerned with teaching how manufactured products work. The ways in which to avoid product and system failure, that is the theory of reliability and maintainability, are generally not taught because it is necessary to know how a product works before delving into ways in which it might fail. The need for reliability and maintainability has been ever increasing because of competition, development of new materials and processes, safety and liability considerations, and increase in complexity of systems. It becomes necessary then that our engineering technology graduates have the basic requisite knowledge in this multi-disciplinary field. With this in view, a course on reliability and maintainability has been recently introduced in our graduate-level program. This paper describes the course content and typical examples of assignments done by students. The paper also describes the student feedback obtained so far to help the course structure in content and delivery. © 2012 American Society for Engineering Education.