Design for Excellence in Electronics Manufacturing

4Design for the Use Environment: Reliability Testing and Test Plan Development

4.1 Introduction

Product test plans are critical to the success of a new product or technology. They need to be stressful enough to identify defects yet show a correlation to a realistic environment. The recommended approach is to employ both industry standards and reliability physics analysis (RPA). This approach results in an optimized test plan that is acceptable to management and customers (Caswell 2013).

Using reliability physics to facilitate the design, performance, and resulting interpretation of accelerated life tests, starting at the design stage of a product and continuing throughout the life cycle of the product, is the ideal methodology for creating a viable test plan.

It is useful to start with industry specifications, modify them as necessary, and then tailor the test strategy specifically for the product, set of materials, use environment, and reliability metrics required. However, industry testing frequently falls short due to a limited degree of mechanism‐appropriate testing. Often, mechanism‐specific coupons are used that do not reflect the real product, and the test data is hidden from end‐users.

Similarly, JEDEC tests are often promoted to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). These tests, typically for 1000 hours, hide wearout behavior as the use of a simple activation energy along with the incorrect assumption that all mechanisms are thermally activated, and can result in ...