to be captured in a practical way. Failure to adopt one easy-to-use (in terms of ease of data-entry for field engineers and repair shop engineers) and easy-to-maintain integrated system is likely to result in a failure of the FRACAS program itself. Some of the common outputs from a FRACAS system include Field MTBF, MTTR, spares consumption, reliability growth, failure/incidents distribution by type, location, part no., serial no., and symptom. The use of past data to predict the reliability of new comparable systems/items can be misleading as reliability is a function of the context of use and can be affected by small changes in design/manufacturing. Reliability organizations Systems of any significant complexity are developed by organizations of people, such as a commercial company or a government agency. The reliability engineering organization must be consistent with the company's organizational structure. For small, non-critical systems, reliability engineering may be informal. As complexity grows, the need arises for a formal reliability function. Because reliability is important to the customer, the customer may even specify certain aspects of the reliability organization. There are several common types of reliability organizations. The project manager or chief engineer may employ one or more reliability engineers directly. In larger organizations, there is usually a product assurance or specialty engineering organization, which may include reliability, maintainability, quality, safety, human factors, logistics, etc. In such case, the reliability engineer reports to the product assurance manager or specialty engineering manager. In some cases, a company may wish to establish an independent reliability organization. This is desirable to ensure that the system reliability, which is often expensive and time-consuming, is not unduly slighted due to budget and schedule pressures. In such cases, the reliability engineer works for the project day-to-day, but is actually employed and paid by a separate organization within the company. Because reliability engineering is critical to early system design, it has become common for reliability engineers, however, the organization is structured, to work as part of an integrated product team. Education Some universities offer graduate degrees in reliability engineering. Other reliability professionals typically have a physics degree from a university or college program. Many engineering programs offer reliability courses, and some universities have entire reliability engineering programs. A reliability engineer must be registered as a professional engineer by the state or province by law, but not all reliability professionals are engineers. Reliability engineers are required in systems where public safety