1.1. Typical Problems Addressed By Robust Design
A team of engineers was working on the design of a radio receiver for ground to aircraft communication requiring high reliability, i.e., low bit error rate, for data transmission. On the one hand, building series of prototypes to sequentially eliminate problems would be forbiddingly expensive. On the other hand, computer simulation effort for evaluating a single design was also time consuming and expensive. Then, how can one speed up development and yet assure reliability?
In an another project, a manufacturer had introduced a high speed copy machine to the field only to find that the paper feeder jammed almost ten times more frequently than what was planned. The traditional method for evaluating the reliability of a single new design idea used to take several weeks. How can the company conduct the needed research in a short time and come up with a design that would not embarrass the company again in the field?