Globalization in automotive industry and product reliability

The development in the industrie in the last years was strongly influenced by the need for light weight, low cost products and increased requirements related to durability, improved reliability and safety. The need for light weight , low cost design is almost opposed to the requirements concerning durability and improved reliability and safety. This is the main reason why, instead of constinously improved procedures for the validation of components, recall actions and service failures are still an important issue in the automotive industrie..