Achieving growth in reliability

There exists a considerable literature on reliability growth modelling. Recently some common models have been extended to encompass innovation. They assume the time of an innovation is known and that there is a coincidental improvement in performance. However, despite such developments, it remains that most models do not fully address the engineering concerns as they do not capture the underlying physical processes and they tend to be optimistic about ensuing performance. This paper aims to address these issues by specifying a general framework for reliability growth that supports more effective modelling. Further, we develop a strategy for using such models proactively during development to facilitate meaningful improvements in reliability performance.