A critical review of Design for Reliability - A bibliometric analysis and identification of research opportunities

It is fundamental to adopt a Design for Reliability (DfR) approach at the stage of new product development in order to guarantee the reliability of an item at all stages of its life cycle. The amount of publications about DfR is not very extensive and it is somewhat dispersed. Thus, the main objective of this article is to collect and perform an analysis of the most recent literature. Fifty publications were analysed with the purpose of identifying the theoretical foundations regarding this topic. Moreover, the main applications, challenges and limitations of DfR were identified aiming the direction for future research. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.