
Reducing Warranty Claims by Reliability Improvement • 97
particular pattern can also indicate that the component has entered into
the wear- out period of its operating life and simply wore out.
Any pattern of the same type of failure, or same component failing, or
failure in the same location tells you something is wrong, and it usually
means a reliability issue. Scattered failures, isolated failures, and a wide
variety of failure modes might indicate environmentally induced stress.
It also is a good indicator of the need for burn- in. Alternatively it could
simply be normal random failures. If your failure pattern analysis implies
it is not a ...