Individuality in Small-Plant Reliability

Increases in performance requirements and environmental severity, coupled with customer demands for analysis, review, testing, demonstration, training and documentation have pushed reliability costs to a critical stage. To prevent short-cutting an adequate program, reliability manpower costs must be reduced. The contrasting situations between plants with independent reliability organizations and plants with the reliability tasks distributed among existing departments will be discussed. The work atmosphere that is characteristic of many small plants and its adaptation to the organizational technique of task integration will be described. Examples will be presented of reliability work assigned according to engineering planning and procedures to those departments with personnel capable of doing the work. Guidaance, unity, strength and control of a task-integrated reliability program will be shown to be the responsibility of a management staff representative. Replies to a questionnaire on the distribution of reliability manpower will be analyzed with respect to the principle that, in small plants, reliability activities are performed by each of the major departments.