What Counts as a Failure?

Abstract

Kirk and Fred discuss the analysis of what can or should be considered a failure.

Key Points

Join Kirk and Fred as they discuss the criteria for what constitutes a failure during testing and in the customer’s use.
Topics include:

• Should all failures be counted? Many failures are apparent, especially those that are catastrophic and require repair, but many are just operational and intermittent and can be “fixed” by power cycling.
• The CPUs in PCs can throttle down their processing speed to reduce overheating, and the computer can slow down to a crawl. Should we count this as a failure?
• Kirk talks about his experience on the Dr. Pepper canning line and the many ways the line could cause a production stop, which could all be attributed to an operator or equipment failure, and all could be costly and need to be included as failures.
• Anytime the customer has to call a company about their equipment having an operational failure, it has some cost to the company, regardless of the cause. Even if it is a failure of the operator or the equipment, it all results in the customer’s confidence in the quality and reputation for reliability, and possibly lost sales

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.

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 feel free to distribute it. Attempting to predict reliability is a misleading and costly approach to use for developing a reliable system.

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.