Design for Reliability (DFR) Planner

Design for Reliability (DFR) is a process in which a set of reliability engineering practices are utilized early in a product's design and integrated into the entire product development cycle. It is widely understood that the cost of addressing reliability issues increases significantly as a product progresses through the development cycle (e.g., it usually is much more expensive to provide support for an unreliable product than it is to improve a product's design). Thus, the effective use of DFR can minimize the costs and maximize the benefits of producing a reliable product.

For additional information on DFR, please read "Design for Reliability: Overview of the Process and Applicable Techniques" at: http://www.ReliaSoft.com/newsletter/v8i2/reliability.htm.[1]

Because each stage of the DFR process may involve multiple activities (which themselves may involve multiple sub-activities), and because the full completion of one stage may be required before the team can move on to another stage, it is important to carefully manage each of the activities involved in the process. The DFR tab in the Analysis panel includes two different views for managing and tracking the progress of a DFR process:

The Hierarchy view is used to manage the various properties of each stage, including its starting, ending and due dates. In this view, you can see all the activities of a DFR process arranged in a tree-based configuration.
The Plot view displays a timeline of the DFR process (or a specified part of the process) that you defined in the Hierarchy view.

To add a DFR planner to a project, select an item in the system hierarchy and choose Insert > Planning > Add DFR Planner.

The Create DFR Planner window will appear and allow you to create a blank planner or select a template to base your new DFR planner on. Using a template allows you to pre-populate the new plan with information about the typical Design for Reliability phases that are used by your organization. (If no templates exist in your active library, a blank planner will be created automatically.)

After the new planner is opened in the Analysis panel, the DFR planner icon will appear for the selected item in the system hierarchy (if you have selected to display the DFR column of the hierarchy). To hide or display columns in the system hierarchy, right-click the column headers, then click Customize Columns to open a window and select which columns you want to display. (You can also choose File > Application Setup then clear or select the relevant check boxes on the System Hierarchy page.)