TABLE OF CONTENTS The history, development, and accomplishments of reliability engineering may be summarized as follows:
1941 to 1945 - 1. 60% of the airborne equipment shipped to the Far East arrived damaged; 50% of the spares and equipment in storage became unserviceable before use; electronic gear on bombers gave no more than 20 hours of trouble-free operation. Today less than 15% of such equipment arrives damaged and electronic gear give more than 950 hours of trouble-free operation, on the average.
2. 60% to 75% of radio vacuum tubes in communications equipment were failing, putting such equipment out of commission or under repairs. This very low reliability and poor maintainability of such and other equipment sparked the development of the new era of solid-state physics, of solid-state electronic components such as diodes and transistors, of very large scale integrated circuits, and finally of megabyte memory chips.
1941- Robert Lusser, who worked on the German V-1 missile testing program at Peenemunde, Germany, becomes one of the first men to recognize the need for reliability engineering as a separate discipline. He came to this country after World War II and joined the Research and Development Division, U.S. Army, Red-stone Arsenal, Huntsville, Alabama. He wrote numerous papers covering reliability theory and application.
Erich Pieruschka also conducted studies of optimum funding for missile reliability programs during this same period.
1943 ( June)- Joint Army-Navy (JAN) Parts Standards Committee initiated.
1943 ( June)- Joint Army-Navy Vacuum Tube Development Committee (VTDC)...
