Ensuring Reliability in Practice: An Exploratory Interview Study on Challenges, Trends, and Optimization Potentials

Ensuring the reliability of technical products is an essential part of modern product development processes. In the face of increasing complexity and variant diversity, companies are faced with numerous challenges. This paper presents the results of an explorative interview study conducted in various industries and company sizes. The aim was to analyze current practices, challenges, and potential for optimization in reliability assurance, especially for variant management. The results show amongst others that digital technologies, such as AI and digital twins, as well as a stronger integration of reliability into the product development process are key starting points for the future.