To be competitive it is important to reduce "Time to Market" for your new product. Reducing test sample size and using tools such as DOE (Design of Experiments) and accelerated life testing (ALT) can help to achieve this challenge during the product development process (PDP).
Examples from the appliance industry are used to demonstrate this strategy. Accelerated life testing (ALT) was performed at the component and subsystem levels. The product was expected to perform to design specifications over the product life. Initial design phase testing included "time compressed" or Highly Accelerated Life Tests (HALT). Based on these results additional design changes were made with HALT and reliability improvements were compared with the previous experimental designs.
New test fixtures were designed to simulate normal operating conditions and to provide further stress to the design for specific failure modes identified from the Failure Mode and Effect Analyses (FMEA). Important customer requirements, such as "home tranquility disturbance" were captured during normal level operations. Weibull probability plotting was used to analyze the test data, pinpointing failure modes and recording reliability improvements. In conclusion, these methods resulted in:
1. Shorter Design Cycle
2. An increase in reliability
3. A reduction in the number and cost of design iterations
Biography: Sarath Jayatilleka is an expert in Product Quality and Reliability. He has a Masters in Engineering from the University of South Florida at Tampa and his BSME and MBA from the University of Sri Lanka, India. His engineering experience includes such positions as Quality Manager in Gates Corporation, Boone, IA and Lead Reliability Engineer at Eaton where he led the Series-Hybrid Reliability Program. His accomplishments include: Leadership of the Legendary Maytag Neptune-TL Reliability Programs – at Maytag/Whirlpool Appliances used in their new product development. He has presented several papers in RAMS (Reliability, Availability, Maintainability and Safety) at the International Appliance Technical Conference. He has also served as a committee member and chaired Six Sigma sessions at the conference. He is currently the President of SRE – Twin Cities.
