Reliability criteria in continuously developing mechatronic systems

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the problems of reliability of mechatronic non-safety-critical office equipment in the conditions of ever changing product models in hard worldwide competition environment. In the introductory part the approach to mechatronic systems reliability criteria, focused on the interaction of different technologies is explained. In the second part the reliability data of one class of office equipment are presented. The reliability data of different generations of this equipment are juxtaposed and changes in failure distributions analyzed. In the third part the followup product development and customer satisfaction problems in a triangle product developer-service-customer are discussed. The meaning dynamic reliability is introduced to involve the customer and serviceman in the product developing team.