AbstractIt has now become possible to design electronic products that have only a small probability of failing in a period of technologically useful life, if these products are to be used in an environment controlled for human comfort. Such product designs, even ones containing considerable complexity, can use combinations of ASIC and semi‐custom VLSI devices, damage‐resistant packaging and fault‐tolerant techniques to achieve breakthrough reliability. The theme of this paper is that once field failures can be reduced to small fractions of the units produced, by means of such design approaches, then major changes and their accompanying cost savings become possible in the manufacture and support of these electronic products. Although some extra design validation steps will be needed, the resulting opportunities can be very significant for companies that design and manufacture electronic products. This reliability‐enabled strategy is fully described in thi