A reliability test must be intelligently planned to be successful. A poorly designed test will miss product inherent weaknesses that fail in application, causing warranty and customer dissatisfaction. Reliability planning should begin at the design concept, proceed through pre-hardware prediction and failure effects analysis, to qualitative testing of the hardware at Beta and production levels, to quantitative tests providing an understanding of warranty with lifetime measurements based on acceleration factors, to screening of production units when appropriate. The plan needs to consider all of the life cycle stresses the products will experience from manufacturing, final test, shipping, warehousing, installation, use, misuse, and maintenance.

Key reliability issues to address during the design cycle are:

• Adequate design margin
• Proper components, applied properly
• Wear-out failure modes prevented during the expected life
• System interfaces do not lead to failure

The outcome of this planning is a Reliability Plan that outlines and provides a roadmap for the reliability strategy.

DLi Labs is your source for developing the best test strategy on your products. We have the resources to get the product reliability results and answers you need.