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T. Paul Parker October
24, 2000
Programs to prevent product failures are becoming more demanding. While new technology and globalization are providing more business opportunities, these opportunities and increased market competition have raised customer expectations. Yet, product cycles are shorter so that manufacturers may often be constantly dealing with new products that have little field failure data. Therefore a reliability program that relies on prior reliability experience with a mature technology will not be fast enough to respond to the needs of a new technology. Stress testing may be used to achieve product robustness even though products are developed with new technological processes under short product cycles. Major companies have used stress testing to improve product quality in areas of product design, component quality and manufacturing process. Such product quality improvement is a cost effective business investment. This short courts provides a fundamental understanding of concepts and techniques that are applicable to the current and future market. |