4 Reliability
4.1 Fundamentals
4.1.1 Reliability
Reliability is a term that is widely used today. Yet, the more a term is used, the more ambiguous it can become.
In this section, I’m not going to formally define the concept of reliability, but instead, I’m going to share a story that changed my whole career.
A few years ago, I joined a new company in a safety-critical domain: air traffic management. My first day there is one I will probably remember for the rest of my life. We were doing a training session with all the newcomers, seated in a large conference room and casually waiting for the session to begin. In front of us was the trainer.
After a brief introduction, the trainer asked us to make a roundtable to explain where we came from. People took turns explaining their backgrounds. For example, when it was my turn, I mentioned that I came from the insurance industry. Once everyone had shared his experience, the trainer paused for a moment and then said:
“There’s something important that you should all realize by joining our company: if we have a problem, we may not lose money, we may not lose customers, but we may lose lives.”
That very moment was a revelation for me. It was the trigger to understand how reliability can be something absolutely crucial in some domains. From that day forward, I started to become captivated by reliability topics.