Failure of engineering artifacts: a life cycle approach

Area of Science:

• Engineering Ethics
• Philosophy of Technology
• Product Development

Background:

• Failure is a critical concept in both engineering practice and ethics.
• Engineers invest heavily in preventing failures and understanding their causes and consequences.
• Existing definitions of failure in engineering ethics are often traditional and may not encompass all relevant scenarios.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze how engineers define and use the concept of 'failure'.
• To identify limitations in the traditional engineering definition of failure.
• To propose an alternative, more inclusive approach to understanding engineering failures.

Main Methods:

• Literature review of engineering practice and ethics.
• Analysis of traditional definitions of failure.
• Development of a new framework based on the product life cycle concept.

Main Results:

• A traditional definition of failure is common but insufficient.
• Engineers consider failures that violate traditional assumptions.
• The proposed product life cycle approach addresses both traditional and non-traditional failure cases.

Conclusions:

• A product life cycle perspective provides a clearer and more comprehensive notion of failure.
• This approach allows for a nuanced classification of failure phenomena.
• It effectively incorporates the roles of various stakeholders throughout a product's existence.