Understanding what Reliability really is has become very important for manufacturers and designers. Too often, products go to manufacturing when the Reliability Team has missed something rather major. Reliability Prediction may be complex and it’s necessary for more than just evaluation and testing.
The reliability engineers must know more about the product than anybody else, even the failure rate. This is vital information and without it, products would not be able to go to manufacturing and make it to the mass market. Small sample sizes and short tests are not going to product any type of magical results, even though some hope they will.
With old standards, such as Mil-Std-217 becoming very outdated, it’s important to ensure the right testing and evaluation when it comes to reliability predictions. Old methods of Accelerated Life Testing just won’t cut it anymore. Today, it’s necessary to use more accurate and more complex tests to find defects in consumer products.
Some companies still try to get away with just using a HALT test to find the defects in a product. This is where they put all of their time and energy, which leaves them open to many mechanical failures and undetected errors.
Design testing cannot be based just on a function test. It won’t cover all the bases and many defects may go missed. It’s necessary to do more than just the old tests that don’t help find the defects in products.
While getting away with the bare minimum when it comes to reliability production may be okay for some, it’s not the best solution. It’s possible to measure items from all angles and in many different ways to find the defects before mass production. Multi-factor testing with a combination of data will help to provide predictions at the earliest stage in product manufacturing and design.
Using the Measuring Design Maturity model is a great way to find defects with products. However, it must be applies in the right way or it may not maximize defect detection. The method includes:
- Coming up with Design Quality Assurance through a combination of stress and function tests to help detect the maximum number of defects.
- Using a Weighted Test Score to ensure each DQA test detects any possible failures with more extreme tests for higher weighted scores.
- Monitoring any possible failures and scoring each one to fully understand the defects.
- Putting all the scores together from all tests for a full understanding of what has to be resolved.
- Using a ration to calculate Design Maturity and the Max DQA test score
With this method, many clients of Reliability Solutions have been able to achieve better results with more control.
Early Life Reliability
Understanding the early life reliability of a product is vital to full success with reliability prediction. It’s necessary to understand how a consumer product will perform early on compared to how long the life of the product may be. Often, engineers will make the mistake of assuming an MTBF or MTTF figure, which will target the accelerated testing and provide a confidence level of 80% or 90%
Instead of trusting outdated solutions, Reliability Solutions provide a wider range of choices for clients with unique challenges. Solutions are based on providing the most effective Early Life Accelerated Stress Tests to ensure the early life of the product is predicted accurately. With the right early life testing, many defects can be fixed before the product goes to market.
Improving Reliability Through Design Maturity
It’s not easy to evaluate Design Quality & Reliability with just a KPI. Instead, you need a full measure of tests to truly improve reliability through design maturity. With the right software package, you can measure the stress and count of a product showing the failure level and any defects. Design Quality Testing from Reliability Solutions gives you just what you need with a managed score system. You will be able to improve your overall product reliability with the improving design maturity from Reliability Solutions.
Don’t Settle for Less with Reliability Prediction
You don’t have to settle for just the Mil-Std-217 or other outdated Accelerated life testing option. Instead, you can use a full array of tests to ensure your product is ready for mass production.
Finding the defects before going to production is very important. If you don’t, it could end up costing you more money in the long run. Getting the best reliability prediction possible comes from the right solution. At Reliability Solutions, we provide the right testing to ensure you have a full scope of the product and its’ defects.