Quality, Reliability and Maintenance

page 1

I have read and understood the rules on cheating, plagiarism and appropriate referencing as outlined in my handbook and I declare that the work contained in this assignment is my own, unless otherwise acknowledged. No substantial part of the work submitted here has also been submitted by me in other assessments for my degree course, and I acknowledge that if this has been done an appropriate reduction in the mark I might otherwise have received will be made Signed: Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan
(for on-line submission it is only necessary to type your name in this space)

MODULE TITLE: Quality Reliability and Maintenance MODULE CODE: UKFM-QRMS 11EB02 MODULE DATE: 28th November 2nd December 2011 NAME/NUMBER: Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan (1161046) GROUP: EBM -J

Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan

Quality, Reliability and Maintenance

page 2

THE UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK

WMG MSc PROGRAMMES

POST MODULE ASSIGNMENT QUALITY, RELIABILITY AND MAINTENANCE

This assessment is worth 70% of the overall mark for this module. The marks will be awarded as follows: It is marked out of 70 with 60 marks for the technical aspects (distributed as shown below) and 10 marks are available for overall presentation and effort. 1) You have been employed as the six sigma champion to introduce the six sigma methodology into a company. The board has asked you to produce a plan of how you would do this. (You can choose any industry and any size of company.) The plan should include information about training, choosing suitable projects, measuring performance, human factors, and timescales. It should also discuss the risks associated with this implementation and how they could be mitigated. The benefits of introducing the methodology should be also highlighted in this report. 25 marks 2) Discuss how design for six sigma (DFSS) can be used in a new product development programme. 15 marks 3) Suggest a suitable reliability plan for a product (choose a relevant product). This plan should contain timescales, reliability tasks to be performed with description and justification of the tasks. 20 marks

In these questions you should refer to data and information from journals or books to support your answer. The word limit for this PMA is 5000 words.
Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan

Quality, Reliability and Maintenance

page 3

TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER
1. QUESTION 1.. 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Introduction Why six-sigma Company Overview The six-sigma approach Deployment Methodology 1.6.1 1.6.2 1.6.3 1.6.4 1.6.5 1.7 2. Define Phase Measure Phase Analyse Phase Improve Phase Control Phase

Page No.
5 5 5 6 7 9 12 12 13 13 13 14 14 15 15 15 16 18 19 19 19 19 20

Conclusion

QUESTION 2.... 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Introduction Necessity of Design for Six Sigma New Product Development Integrating DFSS in New Product Development 2.4.1 2.4.2 2.4.3 2.4.4 2.5 Identify Phase Design Phase Optimize phase Validate Phase

Conclusion

Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan

Quality, Reliability and Maintenance

page 4

3.

QUESTION 3................... 3.1 3.2 Introduction to reliability Measuring reliability 3.2.1 3.2.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Requirement of reliability in laptop manufacturing The approach in reliability measurement

21 21 21 22 23 25 25

Failure analysis Reliability time scale Conclusion

BIBILIOGRAPHY........

26

Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan

Quality, Reliability and Maintenance

page 5

QUESTION 1: You have been employed as the six-sigma champion to introduce the six-sigma methodology into a company. The board has asked you to produce a plan of how you would do this. 1.1 Introduction Introducing six-sigma methodology into a company is a critical process, which involves training, selection of projects, measuring performance and other human factors to be considered in order to benefit from the six-sigma implementation. The implications of six-sigma principles in organizations are extreme. To specify an example, General Electric Company has spent over half a billion in 1999 to initiate six-sigma and successfully managed to receive over two billion in benefits for the financial year (Pande et al., 2000). The importance of six-sigma for organizations is growing rapidly due to its nature of use of statistical tools and techniques that improve the quality of the work and reduce defects. Moreover, six-sigma concepts are widely applicable across all types of industries worldwide. 1.2 Why six-sigma Jalali et al. (2008) believed that there are three significant purposes for implementing six-sigma. They are to achieve customer satisfaction, minimizing the process time and defectiveness. On the other hand Bolze (1998) defied six-sigma as a formal methodology for measuring, analysing, improving and then controlling or locking in processes. However, six-sigma is not only about achieving high quality standards or process developments. The ultimate goal of six-sigma is all about increasing the profitability to the business although quality improvement is the immediate consequence of six-sigma. The major principal behind six-sigma is reducing variation in the products. The quality of the next output becomes unsure if there is variation in the quality. Another major concern of six-sigma is reducing defects. The number of defective products can be extremely minimized by applying six-sigma philosophies in a production company. Six-sigma is also applicable for service companies in serving quality information to the customer. Using six-sigma, the predictability can be improved which is a resultant of reducing variation and defective units.

Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan

Quality, Reliability and Maintenance

page 6

Six-sigma is more of data driven using numbers to come up with ways to solve problems rather than solving problems with value stream mapping (VSM) or spaghetti diagram for the betterment of the company. Problem-solving methods such as DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve and Control) are used in six-sigma implementation process which approaches in achieving and sustaining organization success by making customer satisfaction and decreasing defects or waste in organization (Furtere, 2009). 1.3 Company Overview Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTS) situated at Chennai, Indian, is an IT service and consultant company, which has been carrying out projects for several businesses of Aces international in the United States. CTS were initially established on 1995 and projects on Finite Element Analysis (FEA), Computer Aided Designing (CAD) and Engineering Design have been carried out successfully for Aces International. Over 650 well-trained employees support the company. The long-term association with Aces International has now impacted CTS in understanding the importance of high quality standards and necessity of higher grade in customer satisfaction. This awareness initiated the company in taking progress with the quality improvement, thereby implementing six-sigma. Since 1998, the company has accomplished over 10 projects in six-sigma. Some of the finished six-sigma projects to be noted are,

Quality Compliance Input Quality Design Improvement Error Reduction Cycle Time Reduction Improvement of Schedule Compliance

Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan

Quality, Reliability and Maintenance

page 7

In order to achieve high quality standards and maximize the level of customer satisfaction, Cognizant Technology Solutions has to adopt six-sigma philosophy into their organization. The six-sigma project has to be carried out for productivity improvement and defect prevention. Any causes that would bring dissatisfaction to the customers are considered as a defect in terms of implementing six-sigma. The goal of the new six-sigma project is to reduce Defects per Million Opportunities (DPMO) by more than 50% and improve the long-term process capability from the existing level 3.5 to 4 or above. 1.4 The Six-Sigma approach Six-sigma is a management strategy to use strategic tools and project works to achieve breakthrough profit and gain quality. -Sigma is a statistical term, which refers to the standard deviation of a process about its mean. For 3.0-sigma process, 99.73% of measurements will fall within a normally distributed process. Sigma Level 6 sigma 5 sigma 4 sigma 3 sigma 2 sigma 1 sigma Table 1.1 Defect levels Defects (in parts per million) 3.4 ppm 233 ppm 6,210 ppm 66,810 ppm 308,770 ppm 697,672 ppm

Over a period of time, the defects and wastes can be minimized in a recognized pattern as shown in figure 1.2. The improvement stage represents the successful output of six-sigma and reaches breakthrough stage, thereby achieving a specific sigma level.

Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan

Quality, Reliability and Maintenance

page 8

Fig 1.2 Six-sigma breakthrough (Source: http://www.sixsigmaengineering.com) To state a six-sigma project to be successful, at least one of the following is attained: For projects starting with less than one sigma, an improvement of one sigma in the process capacity is to be obtained For projects starting with three sigma must achieve 50% reduction in defects A Return on Investment (ROI) of 20% should be obtained Johnson (2002) listed the factors that are most important for the success of sixsigma. They are, 1. Full commitment and leadership should be provided from the people at top level of the organization. 2. The project selection and management process should involve diligent project administrating commitment management, cost control, schedule, changes, production, quality assurance, and configuration management. 3. The value of customers proposition must be recognized at the earliest stage of the process. 4. The performance should be tracked and proved using available metrics. 5. A common language for improvement must be learned and used. 6. Sufficient funds must be made available and maintained for the improvement efforts.
Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan

Quality, Reliability and Maintenance

page 9

1.5 Deployment Initially, all the employees are trained about the six-sigma philosophy to create consciousness of the methodology and quality levels. This will ensure the employees understanding over six-sigma processes and tools that they will have to adopt themselves while executing the project. A new team has to be formed to introduce six-sigma into the organization. This team will take the responsibility on improving the quality within the organization by applying six-sigma. An organization structure has to be formed within the team to assign roles for each six-sigma player. The team has different levels of six-sigma players who play an active role in a structured approach. Figure 1.1 indicates the key six-sigma players in an inverted pyramid shape.

Customer

Green Belts

Black Belts

Master Black Blets

Champions

Executive Leadership

Figure 1.3 Key six-sigma players

Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan

Quality, Reliability and Maintenance

page 10

The base of the inverted pyramid indicates executive leadership, who are very small in number but very critical in terms of successful implementation by applying the fundamentals to carry out the project. The executive leadership will introduce sixsigma to the top management from a strategic point of view to gain support for undertaking the six-sigma implementation. The executive leaders will select the six-sigma champions who will be responsible for identifying developments in opportunities and take control of the project. The centre manager who promotes the execution of six-sigma philosophy into the management would take charge of the six-sigma champion position for Cognizant Technology Solutions. The role of champion is to define the route to obtain quality at six-sigma level, thereby creating vision and keeping track of the progress made in the implementation of six-sigma by frequent measurement of work and justifying improvements. Champions have a large role in establishing six-sigma methodology within the organization. According to Harry (2009), the four major areas for champions to be competent are, 1. Business and operations interface 2. Project selection 3. Pace mediation 4. Results implementation Harry (1998) stated, Ratio of one Black Belt per 100 employees can provide a 6% cost reduction per year. For every 100 Black Belts, there is usually one Master Black Belt in large companies. The six-sigma Black Belt plays a vital role of supervising Green Belts and Yellow Belts. For Cognizant Technology Solutions, 6 Black Belts and 30 Green Belts would be sufficient to run the six-sigma project. The Master Black Belt will act as the six-sigma network developer, providing training programs on six-sigma tools and strategies and supervising the overall project.

Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan

Quality, Reliability and Maintenance

page 11

Under the Master Black Belt, there are Black Belts and Green Belts working as team on process improvement and training the other team members. The Black Belts devote full-time whereas the Green Belts will work part-time on the six-sigma project. The Green Belts will work on other projects during the rest of the time. The progress is reported from the Green Belts to the Black Belts and the information from the Black Belts is carried forward to the Master Black Belts. The organization structure for the six-sigma project is illustrated in Figure 1.4 below.

Champion (Center Manager)

Master Black Belt

Black Belt

Black Belt

Black Belt

Black Belt

Black Belt

Black Belt

Green Belt

Green Belt

Green Belt

Green Belt

Green Belt

Green Belt

Figure 1.4 Organization structure for six-sigma project

Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan

Quality, Reliability and Maintenance

page 12

1.6 Methodology The six-sigma DMAIC process is used to improve existing business processes in an organization. It is widely applicable for various organizations as an approach to problem solving. The DMAIC methodology follows the phases: define measure, analyse, improve and control (Antony et. al, 2001). The five phases of DMAIC are shown in figure 1.5.

DEFINE

CONTROL

MEASURE

IMPROVE

ANALYSE

Figure 1.5 the DMAIC approach

1.6.1 Define Phase In the define phase, the goals are defined which is consistent with the customers demand. The customer could either be internal or external to the organization. To begin with, a complete process mapping for the current process has to be clearly illustrated. The work will be supported by number of members in different levels within the organization. It includes the project leader, team leader, quality leader and others holding down the six-sigma project. As discussed earlier, any attributes that fails to meet the customer requirement is considered as defects. Therefore, the next step is to define the measurement system. It consists of the measure of attributes in the deliverables that are sent to the clients, which are not on par to the actual requirements.
Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan

Quality, Reliability and Maintenance

page 13

1.6.2 Measure Phase In the measure phase, the key aspect of the current process is measured. For Cognizant Technology Solutions, the major processes in the project life cycle that affect the quality are to be identified. Any errors that are reported by the customers are classified as defects that have occurred in each process. The input process variables for each of these processes that affect the quality are to be identified. The black belt will undertake this project of failure identification and measurement. To prevent defects occurring in the project outcomes, the process control can be input as a form of indexed list. This will ensure the precision of recorded data in this phase. 1.6.3 Analyse Phase Analyse phase is where the cause and the effect relationships are created. These relationships are a result of analysis performed from the data means in previous phase. This enables to identify the cause of process failure. A fish-bone diagram of the product quality is used to identify and isolate the root problems. Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) project can derive methods for preventing the cause of failure. FMEA is an analysis method to prevent failures by anticipating its effects on customers and then the likelihood of occurrence. This technical risk assessment tool primarily looks at design, process or machinery. For the current project, the process failure can be analysed using the FMEA tool. An effective Black Belt team should work on the analysis, as the output is dependent on the effectiveness in the analysis. 1.6.4 Improve Phase The data is optimized after determining the relationship between cause and effect in the analysis phase. Output actions from FMEA conducted in the previous phase will be applied in this phase. Each recommended actions are optimized and handled individually by different Black Belts for improving the process. Frequent feedback from the customers will ensure the quality of the process.

Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan

Quality, Reliability and Maintenance

page 14

1.6.5 Control Phase After implementing the improvement processes, any deviations from the goals are identified in the control phase. After the implementation phase, there will be decrease in occurrence of field errors and an increase in the process capacity will be attained. The project can be further carried out for continuous improvement in the quality cycle. These further projects will be handled by the Green Belts. The outputs of FMEA from the analyse phase of the six-sigma project can be effectively used in the Green Belt projects to reduce the cost of reworking. 1.7 Conclusion The project has projected the DPMO to reduce to 34 with the efforts of sixsigma players. It is important for the organization to sustain the improvement achieved or there could be fluctuations in the attained quality level in future. The cost consideration is an important factor to be considered by the management before choosing the suitable six-sigma project to be implemented. Further projects on sixsigma may be carried out by the company to sustain and also improve quality in other areas such as on-time deliveries.

Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan

Quality, Reliability and Maintenance

page 15

QUESTION 2: Discuss how design for six-sigma (DFSS) can be used in a new product development programme. 2.1 Introduction Six-Sigma is one of the most important management strategies, which is widely implemented and fast growing business management system for several years. Motorola initially advanced this business management in in the late 1980s. However, Six Sigma was made as management philosophy after the business strategy was central focused by GE in 1995. It is a systematic approach for the improvement of the process and focuses on what customers are looking for. Applying a range of statistical tools in an effective way and techniques, the tool provides data rather than opinion, which furnish more clarity to the process. These values indicate how often defects are likely to occur. Six-Sigma can be applied widely in both engineering and non-engineering areas. The best application of Six Sigma is to apply it in the designing of the product in the first place itself. Design for Six Sigma is all about applying the Six Sigma methodologies into the new design. 2.2 Necessity of Design for Six-Sigma (DFSS) According to Mader (2002), "DFSS is a methodology that utilizes tools, training and measurements to enable the organization to design products and processes that meet customer expectation and can be produced at Six- Sigma quality levels". Many companies struggle to achieve higher levels of sigma performance. The hidden reason behind the failure to achieve is deign of the product itself. This because the companies come up with raw issues of problems that cannot be eliminated by implementing Six Sigma or adopting process improvement techniques such as DMAIC in the production line. For these organizations, they recognize that the concept of Six Sigma has to be taken into consideration at the design stage of the product itself.

Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan

Quality, Reliability and Maintenance

page 16

Design for Six Sigma is the method to think about the sources of variations in the sigma level and to address them at the development stage of the new product. To do that, the Six Sigma tools are taken and manipulated on to the product development processes. Cooper (2001) believed that DFSS as an approach to design product in order to meet the customer requirement and exceed the expectation. When the design is handed over to the production, the Six Sigma level is already achieved without further problem solving or process improvement techniques implicated in future. 2.3 New Product Development (NPD) The new product development is a methodology practiced by industries for successful launch of new products into the market. Cooper et.al (2000) has noted the success factors that NPD strategy enables to the product. They are as follows Ability to reduce Cycle-time Improvements in efficiency Fast time to market High market share Profitability Opening up new windows of opportunity Technical success The unaccounted feature of new product development process is that the designed product may lack Six Sigma performance right at the design stage, during production, during launch or at the customer end. In order to achieve a capable product of robust design, Design for Six Sigma can be used with the processes involved in new product development.

Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan

Quality, Reliability and Maintenance

page 17

One of the most widely practiced methods of new product development is Stage-Gate process. It is a process of introducing a new product from the generated ideas undergoing a dynamic business process in an optimized pathway for the successful launch. The product development plan is divided into discrete and identifiable stages. The stages are of four, five or six in a Stage-Gate system. Each stage is planned in order to accumulate the received information that is necessary to carry the project ahead to next gate or decision point. The gates are located between two stages, which are the decision points for transfer of information or termination from one gate to another through pre-established checklists. These gates also serve as the checkpoints for quality control. The formats of gates are Inputs, Criteria and Outputs. The inputs are the outcomes of the operation of earlier stages and are sent to the criteria stage to take decision of go or kill. The judgment is made based on the questions, which the project is judged to prioritize.

Figure 2.1 Stage-gate Model for new product development (source: Vellandi; 2008)

Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan

Quality, Reliability and Maintenance

page 18

2.4 Integrating DFSS in New Product Development Douglas P Mader (1993) believed that Design for Six Sigma has been accepted to be a design process for new products by many organizations, which is actually not. With an existing new product development, the DFSS can be integrated with the development stages thereby intensifying the structure and provide higher quality way of managing the resources. For a Stage-Gate process, Cooper (2008) classifies each stage to follow three modes of information transfer. They are activities, integrated analysis and deliverables. The project team initially gathers information and then integrated analysis of the results of the activities is passed on. These results of integrated analysis become the input of the preceding gate. By choosing the best matching DFSS variant for the current design process, NPD can be successfully integrated to achieve products at Six Sigma standard at the initial stage. DFSS is generally accomplished with the road map called IDOV shown in figure 2.2. The four-phase process IDOV is comprised of Identify, Design, Optimization and Verify. At every stage, when the project team produces integrated analysis of the results, they can adopt IDOV to refine the product development process for assuring quality.

Figure 2.2 IDOV approach of Design for Six Sigma

Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan

Quality, Reliability and Maintenance

page 19

2.4.1 Identify phase In the Identify phase, the specific customer needs has to be identified. This is very essential for successful launching of a new product. The most important step involved in this phase is identifying the customers for the product and the product requirements. An appropriate business model is then established. Various Six Sigma tools such as Quality Function Development (QDF), Integrated Product Delivery System (IPDS), Supplier, Input, Product, Output, Customer product map (SIPOC), Failure Means and Effects Analysis (FEME) can be used within this phase. 2.4.2 Design phase In the design phase, the Critical-To-Quality factors that are identified during the Identify phase are used to select the most appropriate business process. Advanced tools can be used for simulation to identify probable risks and to confirm the design parameters. The tools that are suitable for the design phase include Design of Experiments (DOE), FEME, material selection, risk assessment, analysis tools, analysis and systems engineering. 2.4.3 Optimize phase Optimize phase utilized Critical-To-Quality factors to obtain tolerance level for the chosen business process by means of advanced simulation tools. The existing design can then be modified to optimal new design parameters and establish error proofing and tolerance measurements. The tools suitable for the optimization phase are, Design for manufacturability, tolerance measurements, Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA) and Six Sigma tools. 2.4.4 Validate phase The final phase of IDOV is testing and validating the chosen design. The final changes to the designs are made and prototypes are tested and validated for assuring reliability, performance and risks for the product.

Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan

Quality, Reliability and Maintenance

page 20

2.5 Conclusion From the existing product development processes, new strategies and tools are employed by the DFSS to enhance the new product development programme. Design for Six Sigma can be incorporated into the existing new product development process in an organization right from the concept to the final commercialization of the product. By effectively integrating the concept of DFSS in a new product development programme, the success rate of new product launch can be improved by providing value to the customer on basis of quality. Adapting DFSS technique in the development process can fulfil certain limitations of new product development thereby making the new product successful in the market.

Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan

Quality, Reliability and Maintenance

page 21

QUESTION 3: Suggest a suitable reliability plan for a product (choose a relevant product). This plan should contain timescales, reliability tasks to be performed with description and justification of the tasks. 3.1 Introduction to Reliability In an information world, Laptop is delivered to the market in an unprecedented speed. In order to be adaptive in the fast and complex changing world, reliability of the product in both quality and quantity aspects has become more critical to the companies. Reliability of products is introduced in manufacturing to be related to unexpected failures of products. The main reason of the failures includes products wear-out, products misused, products overstressed etc. In this paper, reliability of software would be analysed in both measuring reliability and design reliability and evaluated with life circle of products. 3.2 Measuring reliability 3.2.1 Requirement of reliability in laptop manufacturing In the aspect of laptop reliability, most of customers will come up with different requirement. Most of researches attempt to unify the customers need in order to achieve reliability standard for manufacturing. Therefore, a clear statement of reliability is given in three critical factors: defining failure, environmental specification and statement of reliability requirement. Specifically, a case of laptop manufacturing is showed to see how the company achieve requirement of reliability that bring great business benefit. A report on 30,000 newly purchased laptop customers from Square Trade, showed that Toshiba was assessed as one of the most reliable laptop manufactures. In terms of defining failure, the manufactures targeted hardware functional problems like laptop theft and accidental damages. In the next aspect, Toshiba laptop was fully tested to meet standard at extremely environment, which the laptop may be operated or stored in. The extreme environment would include harsh temperature; heavily jolt; high pressure etc. At last, the statement of reliability requirement in Toshiba laptop was clarified. One of its main pieces of statement was the implementation of The Perfect Promise to the customers. The Perfect Promise statement was based on the norm that no product is perfect. Since failures exist, the company identified various issues customers may experience under certain conditions, and then offered
Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan

Quality, Reliability and Maintenance

page 22

free repair service to help users fix the problems therefore gain great trust from the customers. 3.2.2 the approach in reliability measurement The bathtub curve is introduced in most of reliability analysis to observe the reliability performance of both components and non-repaired part of laptop. In laptop development, certain life cycle is identified in to three aspects: the infant mortality, time and wear out. In the infant mortality, laptop experience a debugging period which weak component and failure are corrected or weeded out. After then, the hazard function declines, which indicate the remaining populating, become stable. The product moves to the second stage-time. In the time period the product reaches relatively constant hazard function. The final stage of the bathtub curve is wear-out, in which stage the failure increased with time.

Figure 3.1 the bathtub curve (Source: Gary, 2003)

Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan

Quality, Reliability and Maintenance

page 23

If we take a further look on the distribution of the measurements, three types of continuous life distributions are identified: the Exponential Distribution; the Weibull Distribution and the Lognormal Distribution. Specifically, the Exponential Distribution deal with items that the numbers of failure, which happen in random intervals, remain same for a long period. The Weibull Distribution is subject to non-constant hazard function. It seems that the Weibull Distribution fits laptop life distribution well since laptop manufacturing has a long debugging time. Moreover, after relatively stable period of laptop use, failure in both software and hardware part increased with time. The Lognormal Distribution is also very important toward reliability management. It widely used in situations that the population of failure goes higher. 3.3 Failure Analysis Failure analysis techniques are widely used in safety related and safety critical applications. In the present years, there are also widely applied for non-safety related applications including laptops. Failure analysis system allows inspecting the system exhaustively. This is a typical advantage of failure analysis that is not possible through testing methods but could be designed for better testing techniques. The main advantage of failure analysis to be remarked is that it allows finding dangerous failures at the earliest stage of the design process. There are three types of failure analysis. They are 1. FMEA Failure Modes and Effects Analysis

2. FMECA Failure Modes, Effects and Critical Analysis 3. FMEDA Failure Modes, Effects and Detection Analysis In all the Failure analysis types, the basic approach followed is similar. It begins with applying failure modes and defects analysis to the hardware design to obtain the device failure modes. The flow of information in FMEA is shown in figure 3.2. From the obtained results, the existing design can be improved or redesigned to increase the reliability of the product.

Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan

Quality, Reliability and Maintenance

page 24

Hardware Design

FMEA

Device Failure Modes

Figure 3.2 Failure Modes and Effects Analysis FMECA is a quantitative analysis and it requires the component data as input to support the output with device failure mode. The probability of the device failure can provide the device lifetime, which is important to specify with the product. FMEDA is similar to FMECA with diagnostic coverage as shown in figure 3.3. This is the most widely used type of failure analysis as diagnostic coverage is widely used for non-safety related products.

Hardware Design & Component data

Device Failure modes FMECA Probability of Device Failure Diagonastic coverage Device lifetime

Figure 3.3 Failure Modes, Effects and Detection Analysis

Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan

Quality, Reliability and Maintenance

page 25

3.4 Reliability time scale Robert G (2001) came up with a common timescale of reliability plan for most of the general products. According to his research, 9 months of concept phase, 9 months of design phase and further 12 months of development phase would be ideal for a good reliability plan. All these time period are to be spent on the reliability planning before the product is made available in the market. Therefore, 30 months of reliability plan should be spent on focusing the reliability for any general product. With respect to laptop, 30 months is a long period of time, which will result in, outdate of the product by the time the product hits the market. Hence the time scale should be shrined by using previously performed work on similar products. However, for designing a very unique product, the time scale will naturally be longer. 3.5 Conclusion The ultimate goal of reliability plan is to design and develop a reliable product, which would attain customer satisfaction to the most. A product with high quality is alone not enough to compete in the laptop market. Reliability plays larger importance for expensive products. The reliability measures and holding designs and safeties at high standards that include the United States Military Standards (MIL-STD 758B) will highlight the product to the customers. Hence, the product life cycle will be extended and result in high profit to the business.

Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan

Quality, Reliability and Maintenance

page 26

References 1. Antony, J. & Banuelas, R. (2001) Six Sigma: A Business Strategy for Manufacturing Organizations, Manufacturing Engineering, Vol. 8 No. 3, pp. 119-121. 2. Bawaba, A., (2010) Toshiba rolls out The Perfection Promise; General Interest PeriodicalsJordan Newspaper 3. Bolze, S. (1998), A six sigma approach to competitiveness. Transmission and Distribution World, pp. 18 4. Cooper, R.,(2008) The Stage-Gate Idea-to-Launch ProcessUpdate, Whats New and NexGen Systems, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Vol. 25, No. 3, pp 213-232 5. Cooper, G., & Elko J.,(2000), New Product Performance: What distinguishes the star products, Australian Journal of Management, Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 17-45 6.Douglas P., (1993), Process Control Methods (Six Sigma Research Institute Series), Addison Wesley Publishing Company; Univ PR Partnership ed. edition. 7. Furtere, S. L. (2009). Lean Six Sigma in service: applications and case studies. Boca Raton: CRC Press. 8. Gary, W., (2003) Reliability Verification, Testing, and Analysis in Engineering Design, New York: Marcel Dekker, pp.140-145 9. Harry, M. J. (1998). Six Sigma: A breakthrough strategy for profitability. Quality Progress, pp.60-64 10. Jalali, M., et al,(2008). Using Knowledge Management in DMAIC Methodology of Six Sigma Projects. 11. Johnson, A. (2002). "Six Sigma in R&D." Research Technology Management Vol.5, No.2, pp.12-16. 12. Mader, M. (2002), "Design for ", Quality Progress, July, pp. 82-86. 13. Mike, J., et.al, (2009) The Practitioner's Guide to Statistics and Lean Six Sigma for Process Improvements. pp 54. 14. Pande, S., et al.(2009). The Six Sigma Way: How GE, Motorola, and Other Top Companies Are Honing Their Performance, McGraw Hill, NY. 15. Robert G.,Winning (2001) at New Products: Accelerating the Process from Idea to Launch, Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books. Pp.120

Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan

Quality, Reliability and Maintenance

page 27

16. Six Sigma Engineering, Available at: <http://www.sixsigmaengineering.com/>, [Accessed at: 20/Jan/2012]. 17. Vellandi, M. (2008). The Stage-Gate Model of a New Product Development, Basic Books. pp. 44

Yuvanesan Muthukumaresan