What is In it For Them

Abstract

Mojan and Fred discuss the benefits of Design for Reliability and how to demonstrate them.

Key Points

Join Mojan and Fred as they tackle the fundamental question in reliability engineering: How do you demonstrate the value of Design for Reliability (DfR) when the benefits are problems that never occurred? They explore how to frame DfR as an essential investment, not a sunk cost, by focusing on concrete benefits like cost savings, avoiding painful crises, and drastically reducing time spent fixing old mistakes.

Topics include:

Learning About the Product and Requirements
- DfR forces the team to learn critical details about the product’s function.
- It’s a process for validating whether the initial requirements are actually the right requirements to ensure reliability.
The Challenge of Proving Value
- The biggest hurdle is the value of fires that haven’t happened—you have to prove a negative.
- Ask: Have we thought about xyz failure modes? Do we have the data to show they are or are not likely?
- The key is consistently reminding people of the value after a potential crisis is successfully averted by an early fix.
DfR as Insurance and Investment
- The reliability effort put into DfR is your project’s insurance against failure.
- A little bit more time spent at the start is a good investment to avoid the massive cost and pain later.
Avoiding the Painful “Fire-Fighting”
- Contrast the high cost, stress, and pain of an “all hands on deck” crisis with the trivial nature of an early fix.
- The time spent fixing things later is non-productive and demoralizing.
The Significant ROI of DfR
- Quantify the benefit by asking: How much time does your team currently spend fixing previous design mistakes?
- Estimate the reduction in wasted effort: without DfR, this can be 25% with DfR, it drops to 5%.
Personalizing the Value Proposition
- The focus must be on “What’s in it for the person you’re speaking to?” (time, reduced stress, avoiding specific pain points).
- Once teams see the clear benefit (e.g., a trivial fix avoiding a major projected issue), the value is internalized, and they simply decide to do it—and the work becomes “really fun!”

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