An automated field repair tracking system [telecommunication products]

The purpose of repair tracking (RT) is to provide ongoing feedback of product reliability performance in the customer environment. The authors present an RT technique and provide an overview of its automated software implementation, which has been used to track several transmission system products. The RT implementation, referred to as the repair equipment analysis program (REAP), tracks the field performance of electronic equipment at system, subsystem, circuit pack, and component levels. The features of REAP include monthly reliability performance reports, alarms when degradation in performance is detected, model sensitivity analysis, problem areas isolation for initiating corrective actions, and specific customer performance studies. The approach encompasses the entire population during the product life using existing sales and repair data as main inputs. Further, it does not require customer involvement or product serialization