New Product Reliability Breakfast Forum

A new breakfast forum on product reliability, sponsored by NinaTek, was presented by Patrick Hetherington, a leading expert on product reliability and Director of the Reliability Analysis Center.

A new breakfast forum on product reliability, sponsored by NinaTek, was presented by Patrick Hetherington, a leading expert on product reliability and Director of the Reliability Analysis Center (RAC).

The goal of this forum was to facilitate a cross-industry discussion to discover new viewpoints and to explore new and emerging techniques and ideas.

In attendance were manufacturing companies representing transportation equipment, electronics, computer equipment, design services, industrial equipment, aerospace components, and water management industries as well as university representatives.

Overall, the attendees provided excellent feedback to the forum stating it was "informative, motivating, and a good, high-level overview containing valuable information." Moreover, all of the respondents said they would like to attend future similar events and provided many insightful ideas for future topics.

The most frequently requested topic was quantifying and analyzing costs of items such as product life cycle, warranty, design and reliability implementation.

Josh Siler, NinaTek's Director of Technology, said "the excellent turnout to the event confirms the high-interest for ongoing improvement in product reliability." The Product Reliability Forum covered a 'state of the industry' review of product reliability in manufacturing, including the Past, Present and Future of Product Reliability along with the key drivers for future improvements.

Patrick Hetherington said "High reliability leads to higher market share, decreased warranty costs, lower operating costs, and high-tech innovation." Hetherington also emphasized the most effective method of justifying product improvements is for reliability practitioners to translate abstract statistical terminology into financial impact that business decision makers can readily understand and act upon.

Attendees were also provided a first look at NinaTek's new Product Performance software, designed to provide business users with a standardized analysis across the enterprise and produce consistent ROI predictions for value improvement projects.

Additionally, Hetherington pointed out some relevant statistics on the cost benefit of investment in reliability: 5% increase in reliability focused development costs return, 10% reduction in warranty costs, 20% increase in reliability focused development costs will typically half warranty costs, 50% increase in reliability, focused development costs can reduce warranty cost by a factor of five.

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