1 PHILOSOPHY

When a product fails unexpectedly, experience has shown that in almost every case the problem can be traced back to lack of, or inadequate, testing, which in turn resulted from an attempt to save money. It has to be admitted that testing can be very expensive in both time and money; so why is it essential? Put simply, men and women make mistakes, machines go wrong and we don't know enough.

If people are going to make mistakes we have to check their production. Similarly, if machines can vary in their performance we have to check their output. Generally, we don't have enough knowledge to make a product and be sure that it will work. The customer is unlikely to believe us if we said we did and expects us to test to prove fitness for purpose. Demands for greater quality assurance and consumer protection, together with improved performance, are likely to result in more testing rather than less.

We certainly don't know enough to design a new product without making use of material property data, and as new materials are continually developed there is an ongoing need to test their properties. As design methods become more sophisticated and expectations of performance increase we need better data even for established materials. In this context, because rubbers are such complex materials the demands on testing are perhaps particularly onerous.

When things go wrong we often do not know why. If we did we probably would have stopped it happening.