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Engineering Design Handbook - Development Guide for Reliability - Part IV; Reliability Measurement

1-1 GENERAL 
Reliability measurement techniques provide 
a common discipline that can be used to 
make system reliability projections through- 
out the life cycle of a system. The data on 
component and equipment failures obtained 
during the reliability measurement program 
can be used to compute component failure 
distributions and equipment reliability char- 
acteristics. Reliability measurement tech- 
niques are used during the research and 
development phase to measure the reliability 
of components and equipments and to eval- 
uate the relationships between applied stresses 
and environments and reliability. Later in a 
system life cycle, reliability measurement and 
testing procedures can be used to demonstrate 
that contractually required reliability levels 
have been met. 
Uniform criteria for establishing a reliabil- 
ity measurement program are defined in 
MIL-STD-785 (Ref. l). These standards must 
be incorporated into Department of Defense 
procurements of all systems that undergo 
contract definition. If a system does not re- 
quire a contract definition effort, they can be 
incorporated in the request for proposal 
(RFP). 
The Army has developed a number of reg- 
ulations, complementing MIL-STD-785, which 
establish reliability as a major parameter 
which must be measured during the develop- 
ment Of a new weapon system (Refs. 2, 3, 
and 4). All Army materiel ought to be phys- 
ically tested to determine whether the design 
requirunents, including reliability, have been 
met. Testing is performed under the direction

of the appropriate AMC commodity com- 
mands, project managers, and installations or 
activities which report directly to Head- 
quarters AMC. 
The US Army Test and Evaluation Com- 
mand (USATECOM) is responsible for review- 
ing test documentation produced by other 
Army organizations. USATECOM can, at its 
own discretion, conduct independent tests 
and evaluations on any Army developed sys- 
tem (Ref. 5). The reliability measurement 
techniques described in this volume are con- 
sistent with Army Regulations and can be 
applied directly 10 systems developed under 
Arlny auspices. 
A reliability measurement system consists 
Of two major functional divisions: (l) the 
test program, and (2) the data system.