Equipment failure definition: a prerequisite for reliability test and validation

While product reliability has become a major concern to most organizations, many have overlook developing good reliability specifications. This oversight can result in ambiguous and purposeless reliability testing during validation phase of the product development. Effective reliability testing requires well-defined reliability specification. After all, the prime objective of a reliability-engineering program is to test and assess product reliability. A common element that is vastly ignored but rather critical to a sound reliability specification is definitions of equipment failure. Even the most vigorous reliability-testing program is of little use if the product being tested has poorly defined failure parameters. This paper discusses the essential requirements for establishing concise and effective reliability specifications, and proposes a method to define equipment failure.