Design for Warranty & Warranty Prediction Services

Have you ever been surprised when that new product you launched 6 months ago had warranty costs 2X higher than expected? This is, in fact, a common occurrence. With warranty costs in the computer and high tech electronic industries passing $6.2 billion annually, it also has a large impact on business profitability.

Product development teams are being challenged to design products that are both less costly to fix and more reliable (AFR). During Design for Warranty & Warranty Prediction, we identify and analyze the most likely and costly warranty events and develop design alternatives to reduce warranty costs. We then select the best design alternatives based on projected warranty savings, manufacturing costs, and design feasibility. From these, the whole product warranty cost prediction is developed and compared to product goals. Finally the deliverables of this service are integrated into your Reliability Plan.

The first step is to construct a warranty cost model for the product. The model constructs the cost of warranty events from the support process costs used by your company to resolve it and the event's frequency of occurrence. We do this to identify the material, labor, call center and overhead cost contributions for each of the major support processes used to 'service' events. With this information we can build a complete cost picture for the most likely warranty events for the new product. We often find that for many warranty events, the material cost is not the dominant cost. Consider the following Pareto chart of one product's warranty costs. Each stacked bar represents the total cost of all occurrences for a single warranty event in a year; process cost elements (labor, travel, material, call center) are displayed as colored segments of the stacked bar. As you can see material costs (yellow) vary from 5% to 65% of an event's total cost! While reducing a component's failure rate is one way to reduce cost, designing a product to use less expensive support processes to resolve the event is an equally important design choice for cost reduction.

Another valuable analytical technique is to compare alternative designs on a total warranty cost savings and a cost to implement basis. Consider the example depicted in the next figure. The design team has identified two potential design alternatives for a specific warranty event. The first cuts the AFR of the offending component by half. The second requires that the customer can self-diagnose and self-repair the product, with support for both from the call center.

Notice that Alternative 2 (Self-fix) reduces the warranty burden 25% more than Alternative 1 (Reduce AFR by 1/2). Of course an alternative that combines both AFR reductions and shifts the warranty event intervention to a less costly process might even be better! As part of this comparison process, we also identify dependencies on needed diagnostic tools and support process capabilities. Each design alternative is also scored for both feasibility and risk. For example, the above self-fix alternative needs diagnostic tools that have a high development risk and would not be the alternative to choose. The techniques used in Design for Warranty & Warranty Prediction are valuable to the development team: they allow the team to express the value of design alternatives in terms that everyone in the business understands - warranty dollars savings.

For more information on these services, please click on the following links: Design for Warranty and Warranty Performance Analysis. You can also email us at info@opsalacarte.com or call (408) 472-3889.

COST OF WARRANTY

A product design team is developing an upgraded version of a current product. It is a high volume computer product. The current product has significant warranty issues that must be addressed. One issue requires on-site service calls to replace a $200 component with a total event cost of $720 (total service process costs of labor= $300, travel=$200, Material=$200,Call-center=$10, service overhead=$10). With the current component's annual failure rate (AFR) and the number of units under warranty, 700 such warranty events occurs annually. Design redundancy is not an option. The team has identified two design alternatives.

Alternative Design 'A' would cut the components AFR by 1/2 with cost premium of 30%.

Alternative Design 'B' would use the current component but would allow for the customer to easily self-install the a replacement component ( new service costs of call-center= $50, service-overhead= $50). Alternative 'B' requires a new diagnostic tool that will cost $40,000 to develop and deploy to the service organization. The tool will positively identify the component as the root cause only 90% of the time. The remaining 10% of the time, the computer will need to be diagnosed and repaired by a authorized service rep. Marketing has signed an agreement with an ASP to do this service for $150/event plus parts cost.

What is the warranty cost saving for both alternatives 'A' and 'B'?

The Reliability, Maintainability, and Supportability Partnership (RMS/P) organization's goal is to enhance communication, coordination and collaboration between industry and government in a manner that will encourage individuals and organizations to adopt an integrated systems engineering approach, or end-to-end management approach, when addressing RMS issues. The RMS Partnership also encourages individuals, professional societies, and industry associations to develop, use and maintain world-class RMS non-government standards. The RMS Partnership publishes a quarterly newsletter which is freely available on the Web site. Membership in the RMS Partnership is open to individuals and organizations interested in being on the cutting edge of RMS issues and initiatives both nationally and internationally.

Ops A La Carte's newsletter goes out to over 4000 subscribers. If you would like to advertise in next quarter's "Reliability News", email us at advertise@opsalacarte.com or call at (408) 472-3889.

Reliability Engineer Job Description

Microsoft is a world leader in the design of personal computer input devices.

We are currently looking for a creative and talented individual with a passion for technology to drive reliability and qualification of hardware products to advance PC Hardware's leadership position in exceeding our consumers' durability expectations.

The candidate's primary responsibility will be development and implementation of methodologies/ techniques to enhance product reliability. The candidate will be required to analyze and verify engineering design concepts of electro and optical mechanical products using simulation and test tools. He/she will be expected to propose design improvement based on analyses results. Candidate should be able to perform Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to evaluate product (mechanical) functional performance as well as address overstress and fatigue-related durability problems.

The applicant should understand Physics-of-Failure and be able to develop and implement accelerated tests to mitigate risks and qualify engineering designs during product development. She/he is expected to be familiar with using acceleration models for common failure modes in electronic products to estimate product service life. Candidate should be capable of applying Design of Experiments (DOE) concepts to develop test plans to improve product robustness and performance. The individual should be able to use knowledge of product design and manufacturing to develop Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA). Knowledge of statistical techniques and models is required to analyze test data and estimate product life cycle performance.

At the component level, the individual will work to develop reliability specifications for discrete components used in PCB assembly. He/she will be responsible for component qualification activity for components that are critical and strategic to Microsoft product requirements. The candidate will be expected to use knowledge of process capability for electronic component production as well as system-level performance requirements to establish critical to quality and reliability metrics. An engineer in this role will be responsible for implementing low cost part procurement strategies while minimizing component performance and reliability risk. The candidate will use knowledge of electronic package design as well as qualification methodologies for silicon and packages to support qualification of ASICs developed internally at Microsoft.

This role will require engagement on multiple products with cross-functional teams. Strong skill-set in analysis and problem solving as well as communication are required. Candidates must be able to travel internationally.

Qualifications:

Masters degree in Physics, Electrical, Mechanical or Materials Engineering or a related field.

Five years work experience in:

* Product design risk analysis using analytical tools;

* reliability and life estimation of electro-mechanical products using computer aided engineering design tools, statistics and finite element models;

* developing mechanical functioning, environmental stress and accelerated life tests to evaluate product performance;

Proven experience in working with external design and manufacturing partners is a plus.

For complete job description or to submit your resume please email malk@microsoft.com.

Principal Engineer for Reliability and Test Development

Cooligy, Inc. has an immediate opening for a reliability and test engineer who will be responsible for materials, component, and product performance testing, accelerated environmental stress testing (in house and outsourced), and for data acquisition methodology and analysis. You will be expected to evaluate and develop innovative solutions (design, material selection) that directly impact system performance, such as noise, packaging, manufacturability and reliability. You will support the product development and manufacturing teams from design through conformance tests, regulatory approvals and standard compliance. Requirements: BS/MS/Ph.D. in Material Science, Chemical Engineering, Applied Physics or related field with minimum 5 years of experience, preferably in a product based development company with focus on reliability engineering. For complete job description or to submit your resume please email hr@cooligy.com or call (650) 417-0306.

Ops A La Carte's newsletter goes out to over 4000 subscribers. If you would like to put a job opening in next quarter's "Reliability News", email us at jobopenings@opsalacarte.com or call at (408) 472-3889.