Development of innovative and reliable technical products: The impact of historical, educational, and social interaction aspects on reliability and safety engineering

The industrialisation process has led to the development of innovative and reliable complex technical products, while also shaping different national approaches to reliability and safety engineering. In Europe, countries such as Germany and France exhibit distinct product characteristics and reliability philosophies. At the same time, Asian industrial nations like Japan and Taiwan have developed alternative approaches to reliability, influenced by different industrial structures and practices. As a result, highly developed industrial nations have followed divergent paths, leading to varying goals and philosophies in product design, process development, and efficiency during the use phase. This paper highlights key differences in product emergence processes and reliability engineering between selected European and Asian countries. German engineering is often characterised by high functionality and innovation based on bottom-up approaches, while French engineering tends to follow system-oriented, top-down strategies. Japanese engineering frequently results in highly optimised functional solutions. These differences arise from historical, social, cultural, educational, and work-environment factors, leading to distinct reliability and safety solutions. Results are illustrated using long-distance rail transport systems in Germany, France, Japan, and Taiwan.

Keywords: Product emergence process, reliability engineering, Europe, Asia, railway systems.