Studies and methods for improving the effectiveness of reliability tasks

This paper defines a practical metric to measure the effectiveness of the reliability tasks that take place before reliability growth or other prototype testing in defense system. The data collected from Department of Army and Bell Laboratories studies are used to calculate this metric for the systems discussed. In addition the paper will provide a number of proven methods for increasing the effectiveness of several reliability tasks. The main objective is to maintain a level of functionality without a critical failure for a desired period of time, cost reduction and safety management.