What is Reliability ? !!!

This was the first question I asked when I started my carrier in the field of reliability engineering.The answers that I got differed from one person to another depending on each persons mind set and philosophy. Some people like to define it as the availability of an equipment being ready to execute a specific task for a set mission time under specific conditions. Others would say that it is a mix of engineering common sense and best practices mixed with the science of statistics. After working in the field for some time I found out that no answer is wrong and no answer is right but RELIABILITY is a journey. It is not a program that starts and ends but its culture that never ends. The main ingredients for reliability are the foundation of the system being addressed and the understanding of the mission and visions of the enterprise. The term reliability is mostly understood to be used in maintenance and during facility design which is not completely the truth but reliability can be used to address work processes, equipments of any system, people’s activities, and anything you can get results from.It starts all from knowing where we are and where we want to be. Where we are is easy providing data from bench marking analysis done for high ranked companies comparing them with the organizations KPI’s. Where we need to be is also easy which can be extracted from the mission and vision statement that the company states. The question is how do we get there?? (This I will keep for my self as the moment)