Efficiently Finding Root Cause of Product Durability Issue

If we are a project manager of a product development, the prototype testing stage can be considered as the most challenging and critical. If the new product is just a minor face lift of the previous model, we may have high confidence that we may not encounter any major issue during prototype testing stage. But if the new product is a major revision of previous model or even a totally new concept, then the probability of having major issue during prototype testing stage will be significantly increasing. The confidence will be getting lower, especially when we don't implement virtual testing in our development life cycle to mitigate the issues that may happen during prototype testing stage.

Why the prototype testing stage is critical? What will be the implication if failure occurs during the new product durability testing? In current tight competition in most of industries, such as automotive, aerospace, electronics, etc, the new product development time have been squeezed in order to reduce time to market. The need to launch specific new product exactly at specific timing is considered very crucial. The delay of mass production kick off is not only going to give impact to Sales and Marketing Division, buat also to component supply chain.

When a failure occurs during the new product durability testing, how long it is going to delay the mass production, will be depending on how fast we can find the root cause and generate effective solution for the durability issue.

The first step that we need to do is finding the root cause. Below are considered the important aspects that will determine how quick we can find the root cause:

1. Comprehensive Root Cause Analysis.

There are many methods available to perform Root Cause Analysis. Regardless of the method used, the comprehensive root cause analysis should be able to cover the entire aspect that influence the component durability, start from design, material, manufacturing process, even up to the testing accuracy (uncertainty). The root cause analysis likely should provide the list of hypotheses for all aspects that may contribute and correlate to the failure. Then a list of test and data collection events will be developed to answer all of those available hypotheses.

2. Smart Test/Data Acquisition Planning.

After determining the list of test and collection need to be done, then the test manager will translate this list into test matrix and schedule. This test matrix is important in order to provide enough evidence supporting (or not) each of hypothesis. The duration of the test/data acquisition mainly will be depending on the type of test and availability of manpower, infrastructure, hardware, and specimen (Unit Under Test).

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3. Execution of Test/Data Acquisition.

Before running the test/data acquisition, it will be important to ensure the suitability of the hardware and software to each specific test application or data acquisition. For indoor/lab data acquisition, it will be an advantage to have an online/real time post-processing. We will be able to immediately see the result and identify if there is any abnormality in the process. For outdoor data acquisition, we may have no option other than running standalone recording. But we may want to select data acquisition system that allow us to validate the data by using compact mobile device, such as mobile phone or tablet. By having this, we can immediately recognize if there is any instrumentation issue. We really don't want to have scenario where we need to repeat the whole data acquisition procedure, due to some sensor broken and we only notice it after downloading the data. Another important procedure needs to be done is to ensure if all the data acquisition system and transducer selected have been calibrated to achieve certain level of accuracy.

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4. Intelligent Data Post-processing and Reporting

Unlike test/data acquisition execution stage which involves a lot of hardware and physical activities, Data Post-processing and Reporting stage mostly involves only software and digital data. Up to certain extent, designing an accelerated testing may be possible to achieve. But for data acquisition, cutting the execution time without reducing the data fidelity may not be easy, since it is highly depending on hardware technology. For this reason, optimizing the lead time to run Data Post-processing and Reporting may become very important to increase the efficiency of the entire process, especially for standalone data acquisition. The fact that this stage is mostly involving digital process, provide us the chance to involve automation (batch processing) within the process, especially when we are dealing with large number of acquisition channels. By adding in automation in the process, we will be able to post-process the data and obtain the results by having just few clicks.

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After confirming the root cause, we will go to the next step, which is developing solution to improve our product and resolving the durability issue. The simplest way to find the best idea to encounter the durability issue is by running physical trial and error. For durability testing, if we have the infrastructure and device for running laboratory scale test, then we have opportunity to squeeze the test duration by implementing specific method (mission synthesis) to perform Accelerated Testing. The method used should be carefully selected and carefully examined to ensure that the test still represents the phenomena in our product actual service life. By having mission synthesis, we have opportunity to combine the data from different environment and make the test duration become more efficient without significantly reduce the test accuracy.

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In addition, utilizing virtual test (FEA) may provide us further opportunity to resolve product durability issue in more efficient way. We may need to update and validate the FE model first to ensure the accuracy. Once it is updated and validated, we will be able to utilize it for running the iteration.

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Do you still spend too much time to resolve issue during prototype vibration/durability testing? Do you need to reduce the effort and shorten the time?

With our expertise and experience in durability and vibration. we are able to guide your team step by step, developing the systematic approach that applicable for most of the cases that you encounter. Contact Us Now!