Reliability Beyond Maintenance

Good article. A theoritical approach with a good mixture of TQM (Total Quality Management) concept, RCM (Resource Conservation Management) and of course Reliability. The reliability is always analysed on the basis of the criticality, be it a person, machinery or a knowledge. There are preventive and predictive maintenance technics available to increase reliability of critical equipments.
The beauty of the concept lies in its application. As the article has shown the technic applied to an equipment and equally to finances, new things come to the fore front when you apply the same to your family life also. 
Excellent article, thanks, Arasji.

thanks for sharing

Nice insight Nitin, and i also like Mihir's examples there...thanks for sharing

Thanks for the referral. Reliabilty is an aspect of quality. Anyway I like the example above.

Hi Nitin
Thanks for sharing the information and also the website. The website is tone full of information on Reliability. For me Reliability is validity for the given period of time. This can be used in any industries. The definition of the reliability changes for each sector/industries.
For.e.g.
In engineering, reliability is the ability of a system or component to perform its required functions under stated conditions for a specified period of time. It is often reported in terms of a probability. Evaluations of reliability involve the use of many statistical tools. 

In experimental sciences, reliability is the extent to which the measurements of a test remain consistent over repeated tests of the same subject under identical conditions. An experiment is reliable if it yields consistent results of the same measure.

In statistics, reliability is the consistency of a set of measurements or measuring instrument, often used to describe a test.

Any good organization tried to maintain the KPI promised to the customer's that is nothing but reliability. Based on my exp. the quality is just one subset of the whole reliability life cycle.

Currently in one my portfolio projects, we are trying to define the Reliability Engineering Process (framework, kpi's) for there Design, Operational Assessment, software solutions,etc...So if anyone has done a process maps, framework for Reliability Engineering, will love to share the knowledge and learn also from others exp..... 

thanks Nithin for sharing a very nice information.reliability comes into picture where customer satisfaction level decreases even though it has met all standards.i feel reliability is inducive rather than creative.

Thanks for the referral Shailena. :)

Great sharing ..

Reliability is Product's ability to prove it's worth via-vis customer's expectation.It is a collective term for quality, productivity and after sales service.
RCM is a step ahead of predictive maintenance, whereby, a pro-active actions will be initiated based on monitoring of process or product reliability parameters.
It is mentioned that, reliability is converned with product performance over a life time, whereas Quality control is concerned with product performance at one point of time. I feel there is no difference. The Quality parameters are set such that,a product conforming to them during manufacturing is guaranteed to perform satisfactorily over it's life time. I feel both are related terms. Quality Control is also encompasses the complete process of corrective actions, if product quality tests deviate from specifications.
This is a a nice elaboration of RCM Concept.

I think the concept of reliability and quality can be extended to Retail sector also..
I agree to Varsha that reliability and Quality are often interchangeable because which is of good quality will be Reliable and vice versa. People when visit retail stores they expect Good Quality products.. Today retaining customers is very important for any business and reliability plays a very important role in it..

Nice insight..

Good sharing, thanks Isha.
REliability and Quality - again in Totality all depends on the Quality of the human and related values. Thease becomes subjects of study, learning apart from normal human value, as our education today is week. Human values as on date does not ensure the Reliability or Quality. ( Like there is difference between Ghee and Pure Ghee ). We should think deeply for our future generations education, otherwise things will be worse - beyond our todays emagination. Education is now a business,and the effect of that is " nothing is reloiable or nothing is of the expected quality in this society. Still some good values are prevailing, and we are lucky that we are getting the opportunity to read such good article.

Amazing insight !!! 

I like the last part very much. And I believe quality is too massive to be understood completely by anyone. Quality concerns organizations, management, services, people, procedures, products, life etc but what we should not forget is: Quality is present. Reliability is the future. The product may be excellent but if it not according to the expectations of the customer, still we have a problem........ 

Its nice knowledgiable topic realll.Already Varsha,Makarand and Dayanand has given their views .....so nothing more to say as it woill be just repeatetion

simply great sharing & valuable comments too.....

Great sharing Nitin Ji....
Unfortunately a lot of companies focus on the quality aspects and during its development barely attention is given to the reliability. Reliability is an essential part of the overall quality but different in approach. Quality and Reliability, are widely employed and misunderstood by many of us. Quality has to be built into the design, one cannot create it during manufacturing. It is very well known that quality is a top-down issue. If the top-down chain does not support quality in actively then no quality will be delivered other than by coincidence. The same is valid for reliability. But one needs to know what it is. So simply to put into Reliability is quality over time......

Thank you Mr Aras.

One word that really strikes me in the entire article is "COMMON SENSE". I can safely derive that if we posses that essential ingredient then a lot of issues can get sorted out by itself. But unfortunately that is one sense which is quite uncommon! :)

Coming back to the article; I think this is a classic case of being 'hand - in - glove'! 
What do your rely on? QUALITY
How is quality is endorsed? Usage and RELIABILITY!

This is purely from a perspective of being non technical and of course common sense! As Varsha has rightly pointed out above the single most vital link in the reliability process is QC. I rhink that unless Quality checks are not done usage will lead to questions on reliability!

Beautiful knowledgeable article.

Although the terms reliability and quality are often used interchangeably, there is a difference between these two disciplines. While reliability is concerned with the performance of a product over its entire lifetime, quality control is concerned with the performance of a product at one point in time, usually during the manufacturing process. As stated in the definition, reliability assures that components, equipment and systems function without failure for desired periods during their whole design life, from conception (birth) to junking (death). Quality control is a single, albeit vital, link in the total reliability process.