Reliability has become a term in industry that is identified as an effort to move productivity to levels never before experienced and to maintain those levels for extended periods of time. The term reliability will have many meanings to many people. This is not what reliability is about.
Reliability is a combination of two trains of thought.
The first is what we call the hard side of reliability. The hard side consists of all the tools that you physically go and measure reliability with. These tools are vibration analysis, eddy current testing, infrared thermography, quality defect rates, and many others. The other train of thought is the behavioral side. Understanding the behavior is the key to changing the current work habits.