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Shows that the new ISO 9000‐4 has covered the dependability aspects of IEC 300‐1. Dependability is defined as a collective term used to describe availability performance and its influencing factors, such as reliability performance, maintainability performance and maintenance support performance. Among these factors, reliability is the major quality assessment of a product during the operation period. With reliability as a necessary requirement, the quality assurance activities taken by suppliers should be extended, especially to cover the survey of the environmental condition, and maintenance planning for the purposes of reliability assurance. Summarizes the characteristics of reliability assurance in the ISO 9000‐4 aspect and, by applying the system engineering concept, proposes a systematic approach for a reliability management programme based on ISO 9000‐4. Believes that, after tailoring in practices, the merits of this approach will be evident in project management.

With the merit of Bayes’ theorem, this paper proposes an integrated Bayesian approach for reliability assessment during equipment development. By considering the prior information, this approach can provide useful information to use for decision‐making. A numerical example is given to illustrate the applicability of the proposed approach. It is believed that the proposed approach would be helpful for the project manager to focus attention on the key problems to resolve them early so as to ensure the greatest probability for project success.