Accendo Reliability

Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site

  • Home
  • About
    • Contributors
  • Reliability.fm
    • Speaking Of Reliability
    • Rooted in Reliability: The Plant Performance Podcast
    • Quality during Design
    • Way of the Quality Warrior
    • Critical Talks
    • Dare to Know
    • Maintenance Disrupted
    • Metal Conversations
    • The Leadership Connection
    • Practical Reliability Podcast
    • Reliability Matters
    • Reliability it Matters
    • Maintenance Mavericks Podcast
    • Women in Maintenance
    • Accendo Reliability Webinar Series
  • Articles
    • CRE Preparation Notes
    • on Leadership & Career
      • Advanced Engineering Culture
      • Engineering Leadership
      • Managing in the 2000s
      • Product Development and Process Improvement
    • on Maintenance Reliability
      • Aasan Asset Management
      • AI & Predictive Maintenance
      • Asset Management in the Mining Industry
      • CMMS and Reliability
      • Conscious Asset
      • EAM & CMMS
      • Everyday RCM
      • History of Maintenance Management
      • Life Cycle Asset Management
      • Maintenance and Reliability
      • Maintenance Management
      • Plant Maintenance
      • Process Plant Reliability Engineering
      • ReliabilityXperience
      • RCM Blitz®
      • Rob’s Reliability Project
      • The Intelligent Transformer Blog
      • The People Side of Maintenance
      • The Reliability Mindset
    • on Product Reliability
      • Accelerated Reliability
      • Achieving the Benefits of Reliability
      • Apex Ridge
      • Metals Engineering and Product Reliability
      • Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics
      • Product Validation
      • Reliability Engineering Insights
      • Reliability in Emerging Technology
    • on Risk & Safety
      • CERM® Risk Insights
      • Equipment Risk and Reliability in Downhole Applications
      • Operational Risk Process Safety
    • on Systems Thinking
      • Communicating with FINESSE
      • The RCA
    • on Tools & Techniques
      • Big Data & Analytics
      • Experimental Design for NPD
      • Innovative Thinking in Reliability and Durability
      • Inside and Beyond HALT
      • Inside FMEA
      • Integral Concepts
      • Learning from Failures
      • Progress in Field Reliability?
      • R for Engineering
      • Reliability Engineering Using Python
      • Reliability Reflections
      • Testing 1 2 3
      • The Manufacturing Academy
  • eBooks
  • Resources
    • Accendo Authors
    • FMEA Resources
    • Feed Forward Publications
    • Openings
    • Books
    • Webinars
    • Journals
    • Higher Education
    • Podcasts
  • Courses
    • 14 Ways to Acquire Reliability Engineering Knowledge
    • Reliability Analysis Methods online course
    • Measurement System Assessment
    • SPC-Process Capability Course
    • Design of Experiments
    • Foundations of RCM online course
    • Quality during Design Journey
    • Reliability Engineering Statistics
    • Quality Engineering Statistics
    • An Introduction to Reliability Engineering
    • Reliability Engineering for Heavy Industry
    • An Introduction to Quality Engineering
    • Process Capability Analysis course
    • Root Cause Analysis and the 8D Corrective Action Process course
    • Return on Investment online course
    • CRE Preparation Online Course
    • Quondam Courses
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming Live Events
  • Calendar
    • Call for Papers Listing
    • Upcoming Webinars
    • Webinar Calendar
  • Login
    • Member Home

by Adam Bahret Leave a Comment

Selecting the wrong ALT model

Selecting the wrong ALT model

Many product programs ( actually all) are on a tight schedule.  When Accelerated Life Testing (ALT) get’s it’s place in the process it is another mouth to feed.  ALT is not a short process.  Each round of testing typically takes weeks, and the results may drive design changes that prescribe additional testing.  It is common to want to get the ALT process going as quickly as possible.  In this haste the primary wear-out failure modes and it’s driving stresses are confidently stated, a model is created, and the test is started.

This seems insane to me. The resource and schedule hit that is being invested in the ALT process is significant, and a total waste of time if the stressors and model are incorrect.  Not only are you losing any return on the test program there are two disastrous outcomes of an incorrect ALT program.

  1. The test says that the product can survive the use life goal, but it can’t
  2. The test says the product can not make it to the use-life goal but it actually can.

In scenario 1 you are sending out a product that will have a sudden spike with  a 100% failure rate sometime during expected use-life.  Remember that wear-out failure modes are a design characteristic and guaranteed.

The second scenario hit’s the panic button mid-development and will possibly drive a major redesign which in turn will delay product time to market as well as other product development program start dates.  This is then added to by the fact you do not know anything about the real wear-out failure mode.  At least in scenario 1 the customer was nice enough to do your life testing for you and now you know the primary wear-out failure mode.thank you customer

This is simply solved by putting a specific milestone in the program for communication and evaluation of the wear-out failure mode and related factors.

  1. Collect a team of the people who know the most about the design technology.  This includes technicians, service people, R&D engineers/scientists, design engineers, QA.  It is a small investment on their part to share what they know about how the technology works.
  2. Decide if a DFMEA, FTA, or other failure risk assessment should be done to further parse out the wear-out failure modes and the driving stresses.
  3. Do some simple experiments on the predicted physics of failure.  This does not require full units.  It can often be done with raw material, older generation products, spare parts or simple design assemblies. We are testing the physics of failure, no the design operation.
  4. Create and validate a model.  The ALT model should be demonstrated at three levels to verify it’s relation to the wear-out failure mode and the correct model factors.

These steps are a small increase in investment in an ALT program that ensures valuable results.  It’s analogous to taking the time to pull out a map and plan a trip before just hoping in the car and heading in what you think is the right direction.  You’re going to be hearing a lot of “Are we there yet” on the way. Making the trip longer is not a good idea.

I will be speaking on this topic at the ASTR conference this fall in Austin Texas on September 28th.  If you can not attend look for a video of the seminar on the blog soon after.

-Adam

Filed Under: Apex Ridge, Articles, on Product Reliability

About Adam Bahret

I am a Reliability engineer with over 20 years of experience in mechanical and electrical systems in many industries. I founded Apex Ridge Reliability as a firm to assist technology companies with the critical reliability steps in their product development programs and organizational culture.

« Unaddressed Risk
5 Reasons Why You Need to Be Using Procedure Based Maintenance »

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

[popup type="" link_text="Get Weekly Email Updates" link_class="button" ]

[/popup]

The Accendo Reliablity logo of a sun face in circuit

Please login to have full access.




Lost Password? Click here to have it emailed to you.

Not already a member? It's free and takes only a moment to create an account with your email only.

Join

Your membership brings you all these free resources:

  • Live, monthly reliability webinars & recordings
  • eBooks: Finding Value and Reliability Maturity
  • How To articles & insights
  • Podcasts & additional information within podcast show notes
  • Podcast suggestion box to send us a question or topic for a future episode
  • Course (some with a fee)
  • Largest reliability events calendar
  • Course on a range of topics - coming soon
  • Master reliability classes - coming soon
  • Basic tutorial articles - coming soon
  • With more in the works just for members
Speaking of Reliability podcast logo

Subscribe and enjoy every episode

RSS
iTunes
Stitcher

Join Accendo

Receive information and updates about podcasts and many other resources offered by Accendo Reliability by becoming a member.

It’s free and only takes a minute.

Join Today

Dare to Know podcast logo

Subscribe and enjoy every episode

RSS
iTunes
Stitcher

Join Accendo

Receive information and updates about podcasts and many other resources offered by Accendo Reliability by becoming a member.

It’s free and only takes a minute.

Join Today

Accendo Reliability Webinar Series podcast logo

Subscribe and enjoy every episode

RSS
iTunes
Stitcher

Join Accendo

Receive information and updates about podcasts and many other resources offered by Accendo Reliability by becoming a member.

It’s free and only takes a minute.

Join Today

Recent Articles

  • test
  • test
  • test
  • Your Most Important Business Equation
  • Your Suppliers Can Be a Risk to Your Project

© 2025 FMS Reliability · Privacy Policy · Terms of Service · Cookies Policy