To stay in business, you must develop and maintain a Value Proposition that is compelling. Whether you are a high-volume manufacturer of commercial products or a low-volume, high-value-added producer, over the last decade Reliability has become a critical aspect of that proposition. Customers have come to expect that every product shipped will work the first time and every time. This is evidenced in the PPM, Six Sigma, and Cpk programs that we, as manufacturers, are expected to deliver. One needs to understand these measures are not just the turn-on quality of the product being considered, but the measure of that product’s ability to survive the manufacturing cycle as well.
