Current Management Reliability Objectives

In summary, I will keynote this Symposium by expressing the following six points: 1) We accept the view which has been expressed by General Davis and others that reliability is a general management responsibility. 2) To enable general management to do their part effectively, reliability specialists must express their requests for support in terms of cost effectiveness. 3) Reliability is a branch of engineering technology that, like all other branches, must be supported by a research program. 4) After research has provided potentially effective reliability technology, the Program Plan for each project must be such as to ensure effective use of this technology. 5) A system of operations evaluation must be established to give immediate visibility to any deficiencies in compliance with or the results of reliability plans. 6) Our experience has shown the traditional practices of the aerospace industry are well suited to achieving reliability. It is important for customer contracting agencies to recognize that many of the practices which enable industry to create reliability have to be supported by overhead funds. Almost the entire Reliability Resources Development Program must be absorbed by our overhead budget. Also, it is important for these contracting agencies to recognize that reliability resources must be an important factor in ``Make´´ or ``Buy´´ decisions. For example, the Prime Contractor´s resources include design assurance and quality assurance disciplines which may be lost when an item is transferred from the ``Make´´ to the ``Buy´´ category.