Development in Mechatronics — Enhancing reliability by means of a sustainable use of information

Increasing functional requirements and system complexity on the one hand and decreasing time for development as well as cost reduction on the other hand are some of the challenging constraints that nearly all manufacturers face today. Additionally, customers expect high quality products. The present paper illustrates the current situation in reliability-oriented development of complex and intelligent mechatronic systems. Therefore, typical development and reliability processes are depicted. It is obvious, that in the current situation, a sustainable and effective reliability-oriented development in Mechatronics is not assured. Analyzing this position in detail, the lack of reliability-relevant information, their availability and especially the insufficient information flow are the serious factors. They avoid a considerable increase of reliability when applying Mechatronics. Therefore, the current reliability information flow in development as well as challenges for a sustainable use of reliability-related information are regarded in detail. An integrated use and re-use of reliability-related information throughout the development process of complex mechatronic systems enables a considerable reduction of effort combined with enhancing systems' reliability. Finally the idea of a theoretical reliability information model is pointed out.