1. It is sometimes claimed that increasing quality and reliability beyond levelsthat have been achieved in the past is likely to be uneconomic, due to the costs of the actions that would be necessary. Present the argument against this belief. Illustrate it with an example from your own experience.

2. Explain the difference between reliability and durability and how they can be specified in a product development programme.

3. a. L is t the potential economic outcomes of poor reliability, and identifywhich cost are directly quantifiable and which intangible. Explain how they can be minimized, and discuss the extent to which very high reliability (approaching zero failures) is achievable in practice.

b. What are themajor factors that might limit the achievement of very high reliability?

4. After processing the existing program cost data and running a regression model on the previous projects, the cost of product development and manufacturing (CDM) has been estimated to follow the equation: CDM=$0.8 million + $3.83 million (R is the achieved product reliability at service life and is expected to be above 90%). The cost of failure (CF) has been estimated as the sum of fixed cost of $40000 plus variable cost of $150 per failure. The total number of the expected failures is , where is the total number of produced units. Considering that the production volume is expected to be 50000 units, estimate the optimal target reliability and the total cost of the programme.