It is necessary to establish higher levels of equipment reliability in a short time, the market demands ever shorter lead times for the release of new models. Also, the demand for new-model cars is very strong immediately after their introduction. The conventional method for enhancing equipment reliability is by screening alone. However, this requires screening operations on production lines and so has been an obstacle to line production and prevented shortening of lead times. We are now able to dramatically enhance equipment reliability in a very short time by detecting failure modes and forecasting the number of occurrences using a scientific technique based on reliability engineering.