Product Quality Expectations and Failure Rate Prediction — The Parts Count Method and Causal Analysis

Abstract

Today, failure rates provide important information on product quality for both the product manufacturer as well as for the costumer. It is more and more industrial practice to dispute on product failure rates in business negotiations and to fix them by contract. If- later on — the declared failure rate turns out to be not achieved, the product provider may be obliged to cancel the damage committed to the costumer and possibly to pay fines.