Reliability programme reduces engine failure rate

An ITI product story

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Nov 7, 2005

Product development consultant International TechneGroup Incorporated has announced that engine manufacturer Volvo has benefited from a successful Reliability Growth programme.

Global product development consultant International TechneGroup Incorporated (ITI) has announced that engine manufacturer Volvo Penta of Gothenburg, Sweden, has benefited from a successful Reliability Growth programme.

Volvo's plan was to adapt and develop a new 12 litre diesel engine that would meet aggressive sales and challenging reliability targets for marine applications for a product with significant sales volumes.

Specifically, the company's goals included a 30% reduction in warranty claims of current product levels and an increase in market share.

Through ITI's Reliability Growth program both targets were effectively met.

At the program's conclusion, failure rate for the new engine in fact exceeded the goal.

Bolstered by enhanced reliability, sales of the engine reached twice what was forecasted.

Urban Larsson, Product Development Manager for Volvo Penta, said: "The impact of our reliability growth initiative has been tremendous".

"Thanks in large part to ITI's Reliability Growth programme we were able to successfully meet our failure rate reduction goal".

"As a result of this success, Reliability Growth is today a standard part of new product development at Volvo Penta".

ITI worked with Volvo to understand the reliability behaviour of its line of current engines.

Rather than look at reliability for the 12 litre engine family as a whole, information was sorted by industry and application.

This enabled historical performance and future requirements for the entire family of engines to be fully quantified and understood.

In this way, realistic yet aggressive targets could set for each engine with specific reliability plans developed for each.

ITI and Volvo jointly executed the programme.

Reliability Growth was first planned.

A model was used to determine the amount of new content risk and associated amount of testing required to identify and resolve problems.

A process and software to track and manage problems to resolution was developed and implemented for capture, continual monitoring and management of test data.

Initially, ITI assisted with the first deployment of Reliability Growth test monitoring and management.

As supporting teams and individuals were trained, Penta adopted the reliability knowledge and methodology as a best practice in new product development.

Penta has since become self-sufficient and has continued to successfully apply the methods and technologies to all development programmes.

ITI's product quality and reliability programme ensure that desired levels of reliability are achieved and demonstrated during product development - before new products go into production.

This is accomplished through a carefully planned programme implemented over the course of the project.

The goals are to optimise the overall reliability engineering activity, achieve the best possible starting reliability level in the first product prototypes, and systematically improve reliability by identifying and resolving unanticipated, undetected, or underestimated problems.