I was recently contacted by one of my validation engineers in Asia, who asked me to help him understand the reliability requirements, submitted by one of the Asian automotive OEM for a passenger compartment electronic module. The requirement specified a B1 life as the warranty period for the module (3 yrs) and also specified the durability target of 500,000 km. The engineer was confused on how to reconcile the requirements of reliability and durability. In my opinion here we see an example of lack of reliability understanding on the customer’s part, although this was not the first time I came across the product validation requirements listing durability. The problem is that there is no clear technical definition of durability. Sometimes it is associated with the failure-free period, …