Determining a Methodology for Effective Reliability Program Plans

Reliability is one of the drivers in the design development projects and main objective of this engineering branch is to find methods to assess reliability of equipment or system. Reliability analyses such as Reliability Prediction Analysis, Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA), Derating (Part Stress) Analysis and Worst Case Circuit Analysis (WCCA) to verify the convenient operation of circuit design are conducted in various Research and Development Projects. The point that requires attention is that all studies or all projects directly focus on Reliability Prediction Analysis, FMEA, WCCA or Derating Analysis separately. This study aims to evaluate all analyses together in a comprehensive manner within a reliability program plan or strategy and to determine overall risk for design project. In addition, with this strategy, the goal of study also is to determine whether the WCCA is required to be applied or not and an algorithm in which cases it will be applied has been established. With this motivation, a new methodology in reliability program plan with a novel understanding of reliability has been implemented and conducted on an example circuit. This implementation has showed that the circuit, which would not be accepted and guaranteed by the analyzes applied by the industry and the literature under normal conditions, was accepted thanks to the proposed unique reliability approach. Possible calendar delay, budget increase or design complexity increase have been prevented.