Improving Product Reliability and Software Quality, 2nd Edition

24Production Phase

There are two major objectives in the production phase. The first addresses production ramp (Table 24.1). The objective here is to quickly achieve design maturity and ramp to the desired production levels. The second major objective is to have mechanisms in place (quality controls) to ensure the quality of the product before volume production is achieved. The activities that take place in the production phase are illustrated in Table 24.2.

Table 24.1 Reliability activities in the production ramp Phase 5.

Product ramp phase
Participants	Reliability activities	Deliverables
Operations/Manufacturing	All products have HASS until acceptable pass rate is achieved. ARG and ELT testing.	HASS pass‐fail report. ARG and ELT report with run hours, number of units tested, all failures submitted to FRACAS.
Reliability engineering	Operate FRACAS. All product and customer failures entered into FRACAS database and tracked to closure.	Periodic FRACAS and FRB meeting. Failures tracked to closure.
Design engineering	Start reliability growth. Product operating time and failure events entered into reliability growth chart. Progress at removing failure modes is evaluated.	Reliability growth curves.
Manufacturing engineer	FMEA is performed (on any significant design changes only) and process FMEA.	Completed FMEA spreadsheet and closure on corrective action items.
Test engineering	SPC program initiated. Production yield ...