Today
is an emerging design practice that involves different non-designers in various
co-design activities throughout the design process. By non-designers we refer
to potential users, other external stakeholders and/or people on the
development team who are from disciplines other than design such as those in
marketing, engineering, sales, etc
More
recently and with inspiration from neighboring traditions mainly within
interaction design of providing potential future users with inspirational
probing kits that may produce inspirational material for the professional
designer.
Design for Reliability:
All
reliability professionals are familiar with the terms Weibull Analysis
and/or Life Data Analysis. In fact, for many, these analysis techniques
have become almost synonymous with reliability and achieving high reliability.
The reality, though, is that although life data analysis is an important piece
of the pie, performing just this type of analysis is not enough to achieve
reliable products. Rather, there are a variety of activities involved in an
effective reliability program and in arriving at reliable products. Achieving
the organization’s reliability goals requires strategic vision, proper
planning, sufficient organizational resource allocation and the integration and
institutionalization of reliability practices into development projects. Design
for Reliability, however, is more specific than these general ideas. It is
actually a process. Specifically, DFR describes the entire set of tools that
support product and process design (typically from early in the concept stage
all the way through to product obsolescence) to ensure that customer
expectations for reliability are fully met throughout the life of the product
with low overall life-cycle costs.
Why is Design for Reliability important:
Why should a company commit resources for deploying a DFR
process? The answer to this question is quite simple... warranty costs and
customer satisfaction. Field failures are very costly. One case in point is the
recently publicized Xbox issue, which has cost Microsoft more than a billion
dollars in warranties (aside from loss of business and market share). Clearly,
in order to be profitable, an organization’s products must be reliable, and
reliable products require a formal reliability process. Three important
statements summarize the best practice reliability philosophy of successful
companies:
1) Reliability must be designed into
products and processes using the best available science-based methods.
2) Knowing how to calculate reliability
is important, but knowing how to achieve reliability is equally, if not more,
important.
3) Reliability practices must begin
early in the design process and must be well integrated into the overall
product development cycle.
