Creating a profession and a body of knowledge for product supportability engineering at high-tech companies.

摘要

At hardware and software manufacturers, a product supportability engineer (PSE) reflects the field experience of the technical support organization and the end-users' operations and maintenance engineers to the product development team and defines product requirements for serviceability, maintainability, and usability. These requirements, when designed into the product, can reduce total life-cycle costs by shifting the cost of quality from external failure costs to prevention costs.;Today, no directly related professional association or recognized professional development program for PSEs exists. This project was initiated to fill that gap. It provides a body of knowledge (BOK) and a recommended set of resources within core knowledge areas. The BOK can serve as a professional development plan for individual engineers and ultimately as the basis of a new professional association.;Professionalization is expected to bring greater respect and better understanding of supportability engineering, thereby increasing influence among product development teams.