Preventing potential fires and hazardous situations in consumer products

Every year many consumer products such as TV sets and white goods are reported to have caught fire. In 2012, the Tokyo fire department reported that about 17% of household fires originate from consumer products. Although these figures are much better than in the past, they are still unsatisfactory. Why do consumer products become hazardous despite passing stringent testing? One of the reasons is that consumer products are generally produced in large quantities. Design evaluation and safety testing, however is only done on a very small sample, which does not represent the statistical population of the product. This paper reviews the issue of design robustness, and tolerance issues associated with large quantities such as are present in consumer products. Then it shows how statistical techniques can be adapted to safety engineering to reduce the risk of a hazardous situation occurring.