Our experience and expertise help simplify the complex task of Test Planning. A reliability test must be intelligently planned to be successful. A poorly designed test will miss inherent weaknesses in a product that fail in application, causing warranty and customer dissatisfaction. In order to identify product weaknesses as early as possible, 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. It should continue into quantitative tests providing an understanding of likely warranty costs based on the expected lifetime of the project using acceleration factors, and screening of production units when appropriate. The plan needs to consider the entirety of life cycle stresses that the product 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
• Quality components, assembled properly
• Wear-out failure modes prevented during the expected life
• System interfaces do not lead to failure

The outcome of this exercise is a comprehensive reliability strategy that provides a roadmap in order to implement it. ARL is your source for developing the best test strategy for your products. We have the resources and experience to provide you with the product reliability answers you need.