Reliability as a partnership element

It is argued that the customer should be expected to return components which fail in service with failure history tags and details of the troublesome applications, test results, and environmental conditions. The supplier should expect to supply a champion backed with the requisite resources, a life expectancy, a failure model and testing program, characterized controlled production processes, and a reliability tracking program. The author´s intent is to portray the supplier-customer partnership on reliability issues as one that is favorable to both parties. Improved customer satisfaction is the result, in that product reliability is improved and the basis is established for better reliability in the next generation. The supplier can realize an improvement in technology and/or test techniques, resulting in a better product to ship to all customers. In short, both parties have a better product with which they can pursue their markets