Reliability Terminology

Abstract

With each succeeding year more and more expensive and complex equipments appear on the electronics market, some as private ventures and some to a specification agreed between manufacturer and user. The user expects the equipment to function with the minimum of trouble for a considerable time. He is demanding reliability, and in contracts this could be in terms of mean time between failures; but what does this mean? What is a failure? Is it a ‘gradual failure’, a ‘partial failure’ or another type of failure? Are users going to agree with the manufacturer if he says one thing yet they think another is correct? Quite obviously unless discussion is based on common ground one cannot hope to achieve agreement when a dispute arises unless there exists a terminology which is agreed, accepted and used by all.

Mr Barnes is a member of the staff of the British Standards Institution