The first day of the Design for Reliability Conference in Baltimore, MD heralded the death of Physics of Failure (PoF). Craig Hillman, CEO of DfR Solutions made the announcement early in his welcome and introductions, explaining that as products get more complex, and reliability impacts on business become more serious, it is becoming ever more critical to have upper management participation. When the rest of engineering is busy pursuing “engineer for success”, PoF can ring negatively in the ears of management with its apparent focus on failure.

Not sure if you should attend the 2018 Design for Reliability Conference, March 19-21 in Baltimore?  Well, here are 4 great reasons not to miss it this year!

“After a failure” investigations are typically performed to identify root cause of failure, calculate risk exposure and develop mitigation and remediation solutions. Just like with “before a failure” investigation, there are two specific test methods that could be applied to either of the two categories – non-destructive physical analysis (NPA) and destructive physical analysis (DPA).

Solder joint reliability is often a pain point in the design of an electronic system. A wide variety of factors affect solder joint reliability, and any one of them can drastically affect joint lifetime in a negative way. Properly identifying and mitigating potential causes of solder joint failure during the design and manufacturing process can prevent costly and difficult to solve problems later in a product lifecycle. Some of the most commonly observed solder joint failure contributors to consider are described here.

A common feeling among many designers and users of military electronic systems is nostalgia.  Nostalgia for the good old days when the electronics industry was almost the exclusive supply chain of the military. While almost all aspects of integrated circuits (ICs) have improved over the past few decades (better, faster, cheaper), many in the military still long for the day when almost every semiconductor device on the market met or exceed their requirements without even asking.

Recently I, Greg Caswell, had full knee replacement surgery on my left knee to fix a problem with osteoarthritis.  I found the overall experience interesting in that the approach the doctor’s used to assess the issue, develop a plan for improving the joints capabilities and finally performing surgery as the last possibility, was similar to the Physics of Failure approach DfR Solutions uses.  

Performing a “before a failure” investigation on electronics is typically done for various reasons.  One reason is to identify weak components or sub-systems before committing to a full-blown production run and its associated expenses.  Comparison testing of similar component parts to reduce costs and increase reliability of existing designs, or against a competitor’s offerings is another reason.  A “before a failure” investigation can validate a design to satisfy customer or market specifications, or regulatory obligations, which is common among the aerospace and medical devices fields.    

Failure analysis is the process of identifying, and typically attempting to mitigate, the root cause of a failure. In the electronics industry, failure analysis typically involves isolating the failure to a location on a printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) before collecting more detailed data to investigate which component or board location is functioning improperly.

As 2017 is coming to a close, we are taking a look at our top viewed blog posts written by the expert engineers and reliability professionals at DfR Solutions.

Along with these blog posts, we have a large selection of resource materials available on electronics reliability, failure mechanisms and failure analysis.

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Electronic components have become more ubiquitous in the last few years. Thanks to technological advancement, they are finding their way into more product categories and industries than ever before. One such recent advancement is the Internet of Things (IoT), which is a network of interconnected systems that communicate using a network protocol. The difference between the current internet and IoT is the heterogeneity. Systems of different functionality, technology and applications will belong to the same communication environment. The mantra that every component and system manufacturer is adopting these days is to make things “smarter.” What started with smart phones is now evolving into the smart watch, smart home, smart city, smart grid, smart retail, smart farming and the list goes on.