Reliability growth test management in a product assurance environment within the automotive component industry

Experience with the testing of automotive components has led to a practical method for efficiently organizing, initiating, and monitoring a reliability growth test process under a competitive automobile environment. Specifically, the analysis techniques presented address product/process design concerns and validation testing issues by providing: (1) up-to-date reliability growth progress; (2) practice tests leading up to validation; and (3) confidence limits with test time. Performing such activities as identifying operating environments, developing growth test curves from the results, examining the results for various relationships between design iterations, and linking the information with other product assurance analyses helps to properly evaluate a product´s conformance to customer requirements. The integration of reliability growth test techniques was applied to evaluate the reliability of an electromechanical device. During the course of the project, a reliability growth test was developed, executed, and analyzed. Other product assurance analyses were performed up-front in the development process to help identify design/process concerns