This book describes powerful tools for the twenty-first century that can predict and correct potential field failures at the design stage of the product, so companies don't have to wait helplessly to witness failures in the hands of customers.
Six Sigma has been a giant in the quality movement but has been a pygmy in improving field reliability, i.e., reducing failure rates for customers. Traditional reliability techniques are woefully inadequate and produce fictitious reliability numbers.
About the Authors
Keki Bhote (Glencoe, IL), one of the creators of Motorola’s Six Sigma, is President of Keki R. Bhote Associates, a company specializing in quality, reliability, and profit improvement. He is the author of 17 books, including The Power of Ultimate Six Sigma.
Adi Bhote (Glencoe, IL), a 13-year Motorola veteran, is Vice President of Keki R. Bhote Associates. Keki Bhote and Adi Bhote are the coauthors of World Class Quality.
World Class Reliability, by contrast, presents a powerful technique to improve reliability by factors of 10:1 and even 100:1. It is Multiple Environment Overstress Tests (MEOST), used by NASA on its famous Lunar Module. Field failures that are found, traditionally, only after months of field exposure can now be "smoked out" in hours in the design laboratory and rapidly corrected; MEOST achieves this by combining several stresses and taking them beyond design stress very, very rapidly.
The result: fantastic reliability improvements; much reduced design cost, manpower, and cycle time; speed to market well ahead of competition; customer loyalty and dramatic profit enhancements for corporations.