Science, statistics, and reliability engineering

SCIENCE may be defined as ¿systematized knowledge.¿ Statistics has been called ¿the technology of the scientific method.¿1 Engineering is ¿the useful application of the findings of science.¿ At first glance, it would appear that these three fields are bound together in an inseparable relationship; but we know that they have always been treated as quite separate areas of interest, both on the campus and in industrial application, and therein lies a problem. While in certain types of engineering the theories of science may be applied without very much knowledge of how these theories were derived, there are other fields of engineering that must use the method of science itself. Reliability engineering is an example. It has arisen with the multiplying complexity and importance of electronic products, and must cope with all of the phases in the evolution of a product, from the designer to the user, and back to the designer. The recent rise of such fields as systems engineering, operations research, and cybernetics seems to have been motivated by this same increasing complexity. Engineers at present are faced with problems of a more and more confusing nature, the solutions for which lie in a more and more theoretical realm. We believe that the traditional, scholastic separation of science, statistics, and engineering creates a problem that is present in all technology, and that while it seriously affects only a few branches of engineering at present, its impact upon all of engineering is both inevitable and imminent.