Study
A cross-industry study on warranty costs
The importance of safety and reliability in end products has steadily increased in recent years. Especially in times of crisis, customers make their purchasing decisions with much greater discernment—quality is increasingly becoming a key selling point.
The main challenge for companies is to meet customer expectations in the marketplace after short development cycles. Although this is not a new issue, reliability efforts are still not given sufficient attention.
Added to this are the ever-increasing regulatory requirements (e.g., EU emissions standards for passenger cars, regulations governing the approval of pharmaceuticals, the law on the environmentally sound disposal of electrical and electronic equipment, etc.), which, as products become more complex, lead to rising development costs and higher risks associated with warranty and guarantee costs.
The goal of the study is to define the capabilities of a company that are mandatory or optional with regard to ensuring the reliability of its products.
Furthermore, the cross-industry comparison of processes and structures is intended to provide insight into the respective best-practice industries and enable conclusions to be drawn about the effectiveness of different approaches.
The “Reliability Benchmark 2010/2011” study enables participants to obtain benchmarks for processes that generate warranty and guarantee costs using a hypothesis-based approach.











