What limits the ability of design organizations to predict failure?

Abstract

A study was conducted of the factors that limited the ability of design organizations to forestall equipment failures in subsea systems. Group interviews were conducted in four suppliers of mechanical and electromechanical subsystems, and the impediments to effective prediction and elimination of failure were identified. Many of the impediments arose from constraints over which the design organizations, individually, had little influence. Some arose from intrinsic limits to the availability of failure data and intrinsic limits to the possible informativeness of different kinds of failure analysis. Several impediments arose from organizational practices in various stages of the design process, and some of these reflected basic organizational attitudes to risk. Ironically, the desire to limit risk by keeping open the possibility of intervening in the operation of a product (by replacement or repair) also limited the organizations' ability to design for very high reliability.