Stress testing and reliability

The importance of product quality and reliability, time to market, cost and customer satisfaction continue to grow as the competitive battlefield expands. The most effective way to qualify a product and to assure that a product will meet its reliability and quality goals and be introduced to the market on time and within budget is through stress testing. Stress Test is the method where the products are subjected to the application of highly accelerated controlled stresses such as thermal, vibration, etc. Stress testing precipitates latent defects into identifiable defects. The experiences indicate that failures/symptoms brought out in Stress Test typically become field reliability problems if not corrected. Stress testing is now recognized as an essential element of design and manufacturing process that results in improved product reliability and quality and reduced overall design and manufacturing, warranty, and field service costs. The purpose of this paper is to present our approach in this area. A special stress testing strategy is developed and recommended.