Many comments here relate more to one-off design. There is also the medium-high-volume manufacturing end. There, a prototype run might be in the dozens or hundreds of units, more than the entire manufacturing run in other heavy industries.
As the OP hints, "safety factor" is not the only term to use. A design margin (including reduction in margin) can be planned with one or more motivations: safety, reliability, weight, volume, reduced BOM costs, unit costs of repair, fleet costs of repair, logistic and warehouse costs of parts for repair, planned obsolescence, and so on.
Probabilistic design, also realized through "Monte Carlo" analysis, can take into account multiple simultaneous non-linearity in various models, where symbolic or formula-based analysis might fail.
For example (and roughly speaking), if one has millions of miles of over-the-road data, say of wheel-to-road forces or geometric road or track profiles, then one might manage to calibrate the following together: 1) a specific vehicle physical model, including parts tolerances and probabilistic discrete flaws; 2) material cycle-fatigue damage properties; and 3) some set of Weibul-distribution-like parameters as an intermediate in predicting failure rates and "lifetimes." .. AFAIK the kind of business analysis one might do could include predicting how many parts one should overproduce and warehouse (in a one-time batch) to service in-warranty and post-warranty repairs out to N years.
At that scale it can also become sociological. "Safety margin" is a loaded term when it comes to liability and imprecision in intent. You reduced the safety margin, as it says right here?!!
Not a bad article, but there could be a whole article on ramifications of different margin-related wording, high-N statistics, and explicit accounts of simultaneous goals.
Many comments here relate more to one-off design. There is also the medium-high-volume manufacturing end. There, a prototype run might be in the dozens or hundreds of units, more than the entire manufacturing run in other heavy industries.
As the OP hints, "safety factor" is not the only term to use. A design margin (including reduction in margin) can be planned with one or more motivations: safety, reliability, weight, volume, reduced BOM costs, unit costs of repair, fleet costs of repair, logistic and warehouse costs of parts for repair, planned obsolescence, and so on.
Probabilistic design, also realized through "Monte Carlo" analysis, can take into account multiple simultaneous non-linearity in various models, where symbolic or formula-based analysis might fail.
For example (and roughly speaking), if one has millions of miles of over-the-road data, say of wheel-to-road forces or geometric road or track profiles, then one might manage to calibrate the following together: 1) a specific vehicle physical model, including parts tolerances and probabilistic discrete flaws; 2) material cycle-fatigue damage properties; and 3) some set of Weibul-distribution-like parameters as an intermediate in predicting failure rates and "lifetimes." .. AFAIK the kind of business analysis one might do could include predicting how many parts one should overproduce and warehouse (in a one-time batch) to service in-warranty and post-warranty repairs out to N years.
At that scale it can also become sociological. "Safety margin" is a loaded term when it comes to liability and imprecision in intent. You reduced the safety margin, as it says right here?!!
Not a bad article, but there could be a whole article on ramifications of different margin-related wording, high-N statistics, and explicit accounts of simultaneous goals.