Traditionally, the way to test a product's reliability was to build it--and then try to break it. As systems and technologies improved, TAAF (Test, Analyze, and Fix) methodologies were developed and adopted. In today's global economy with its short, technologically-intense product life cycles, TAAF cannot suffice. Reliability can no longer be a step or a series of steps in product development; it is something that needs to be acknowledged upfront and built into the product from its very conception. Reliability, in other words, must be "designed in."

Product developers now have many...