17 Examples of Reliability

John Spacey, January 26, 2016 updated on February 09, 2017

Reliability is the ability of things to perform over time in a variety of expected conditions. The following are illustrative examples.

Durability

A bicycle tire with an usually long lifespan, even when used at high speed on bumpy roads.

A mobile device that can play media files that contain data errors.

An ecommerce site that is up 99.99% percent of the time.

Work procedures and systems on a high speed train that reduce severe human error to zero.

A stock trading system with page load times faster than 1 second for 99.99% of requests.

A telecom company that makes less than one billing error per million bills.

A credit rating agency that excludes data from questionable sources with programs to audit accuracy across all accounts on a monthly basis.

A data storage device with an error rate of less than 0.0001%.

A bank that backups up data in real time such that failure of a storage device can be recovered without loss of transactions.

A media outlet that fact-checks stories and doesn't publish news from questionable sources.

An aircraft with redundant systems such that it can continue to operate safely when a system or component fails.

An elevator that requires power to keep brakes off. When power fails, brakes come on.

An electric car that tells you it requires servicing based on diagnostic tests before it breaks down.

A building is designed to absorb the energy of reasonably large earthquakes without collapsing.

Solar panels that are designed to endure extreme weather conditions such as high winds.

A delivery service that is on time for 99.9% of deliveries.

A mobile device manufacturer that completely tests each unit such that less then 0.005% of customers experience an out of the box failure.

Overview: Reliability
Type	Quality Reliability Engineering Service Management
Definition	The ability to perform well over time in a variety of expected conditions.
Related Concepts	Out Of The Box Failure Graceful Degradation Fail Safe Human Error Safety By Design