Establishing a Relationship Between Warranty and Reliability

In today's competitive marketplace, customers have come to expect that the products they purchase will perform as intended, and federal and state laws have been passed to enshrine this as a right of customers. A warranty is a written assurance that the manufacturer of a product will guarantee the quality and reliability of a product in terms of correcting any legitimate problems with the product at no additional cost, for some expressed or implied period of time or use. This paper presents the concept of a warranty, and the relationship between warranty and reliability. The paper is written in the context of the automotive industry, with a case study of an ignition module. A list of best practices and recommendations is provided. One key conclusion is that all warranty as well as out-of-warranty returns be considered field failures unless proven that another cause for returns exist