ABSTRACT
Product quality is the collective influence of several elements that affect how well a product is made, how the item performs, and how well customers accept it. Reliability has impact on all of these issues and, therefore, is perhaps the most critical of all of the quality elements. In Chapters 2 and 3, we discussed methods for analyzing and assessing product failures and reliability. The implications of reliability and quality relative to warranty policies are apparent in the warranty cost models developed in Chapter 4. When quality is high the resulting number on failures and associated costs for warranty will be low, whereas a low-quality product can give rise to high warranty servicing costs. This simple and essentially trite logic is the basis for using warranty claims statistics for constructing the relative quality indicators and MOP/MIS (month of production/month in service) charts for monitoring quality in Chapter 5. Warranty information and performance are very important in trying to control overall quality output to consumers and it also provides valuable feedback for diagnosing areas for seeking quality improvements.
