Reliability concept under general uncertainty

The Toyota crisis is tearing off the brand image of quality and reliability and therefore it is logical to question whether the dominating position of probability theory, on which Japanese quality and reliability engineering practices are established, should be examined. In general, reliability analysis is an exercise under uncertain environment. Foundationally speaking, uncertain modeling is a matter of choosing what kind of uncertain measure as its standing point. In this paper, we introduce the uncertainty reliability concept on the platform of the axiomatic uncertain measure theory and compare it to probabilistic reliability concept based on Kolmogorov’s probability measure theory, on which the traditional quality and reliability engineering is established. It is expecting that a foundational work can be established for a more rigorous reliability engineering and risk analysis under general uncertainty environments.