An integration method for reliability analyses and product configuration

Reliability has been regarded as an evaluation criterion in production configuration, the key step in mass customization. In this article, the authors focus on the integration of reliability analysis and configuration at the component level. Possible failure causes obtained with a fault tree analysis (FTA) are mapped to the product configuration network model via a functional model and a limitation matrix. Next, when a configuration scheme is generated through intersection of a connection matrix and a generation matrix, its reliability can be achieved with the integrated FTA so to compare with those of other schemes in optimization. Such an integration method is also adaptable for situations where the original fault tree is changed, and several fault trees are involved together. Finally, an example of configuring a laptop computer is used to illustrate the whole integration process.