Value of Failures
Abstract
Kirk and Fred discuss how many companies discard or never get back failed parts or subsystems even though they are high-value gold in the quest to make a more reliable product.
Key Points
Join Kirk and Fred as they discuss why so few companies realize the value of field failure returns, testing to limits, and the distribution of stress limits in testing several samples of a new product during development.
Topics include:
- Semantics and the terms reliability engineers use are critical in selling a new reliability evaluation process. For instance, the term “destruct limit” used in HALT (Highly Accelerated LIMIT tests) may sound to non-engineers as if you were going to smash it to pieces and then analyze the pieces.
- Many companies test-to-pass and then scrap the used samples when a better use would be to take those samples and find and compare the operational and sometimes destruct limits, what Kirk has termed comparative limits analysis,
- The potential costs of a weak link during product development testing will be exponentially more expensive to a manufacturer when it fails in the field, so it is a good bet that companies should err on the side of making it more robust.
Enjoy an episode of Speaking of Reliability. Where you can join friends as they discuss reliability topics. Join us as we discuss topics ranging from design for reliability techniques to field data analysis approaches.
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Show Notes
Please click on this link to access a relatively new analysis of traditional reliability prediction methods article from the US ARMY and CALCE titled “Reliability Prediction – Continued Reliance on a Misleading Approach”. It is in the public domain, so please distribute freely. Attempting to predict reliability is a misleading and costly approach to use for developing a reliable system.
You can now purchase the most recent recording of Kirk Gray’s Hobbs Engineering 8 (two 4 hour sessions) hour Webinar “Rapid and Robust Reliability Development – 2022 HALT & HASS Methodologies Online Seminar” from this link.
For more information on the newest discovery testing methodology here is a link to the book “Next Generation HALT and HASS: Robust design of Electronics and Systems” written by Kirk Gray and John Paschkewitz.
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