Customer-focused build-in reliability: A case study

Build-in reliability (BIR) is becoming an essential requirement for product development today. However, the task of BIR can be resource-intensive since root causes identification is necessary. If a product is complex, the number of possible failure modes can be great, rendering BIR too large to be practical. In this work, an objective methodology for BIR is developed so that the task of BIR is customer focus, thus reducing the scope of BIR and maximizing its effectiveness. This is achieved through combining the failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) with quality function deployment (QFD). The method is applied to an actual product in an actual industry, and with this method the FMEA becomes customer-focused, and hence the prioritization of the corrective actions to all failure modes can be done objectively with customer focus. Therefore, limited resources can be effectively used to maximize customers' satisfaction.