Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Chris writes the Reliability Bites series, informed by the CRE Body of Knowledge, offering short, practical insights into core reliability topics and helping bridge certification concepts with real-world engineering practice.
Reliability, Availability and Maintainability are often discussed together. While closely related in practice, they are not the same thing and the distinctions are not always well understood.
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Many people associate reliability engineering with metrics, and while they can be helpful when used correctly, they are not the primary benefit of reliability engineering. The real value lies in the thinking and decisions that shape those numbers.
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When people hear the word reliability, it’s often interpreted as meaning “zero failures”. While that’s understandable, it’s not what reliability engineering is really about.
The Certified Reliability Engineer (CRE) Body of Knowledge, produced by the American Society for Quality, defines reliability as:
“The probability that an item will perform a required function without failure under stated conditions for a specified period of time”
Crucially, each part of this definition needs to be clearly understood and agreed from the outset, particularly between customers and suppliers. Many reliability problems arise not because the definition itself is wrong, but because these elements are interpreted differently.
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