John Keller,
Motorola Inc.
Mr. Keller is a quality/reliability engineer for Motorola Inc. His
primary responsibility is the reliability of new product
introductions for Motorola's Sensor Products Division. He has been
with Motorola for 28 years, and has been involved with product
quality and reliability for most of that time. He holds a BSEET
degree from Arizona State University.
An
article on "Accelerometer Lifetime Prediction Modeling Based on
Field Failures," submitted by Mr. Keller and his colleague Theresa
Maudie, will appear in the next issue of
Reliability Edge. In this article, Mr. Keller and Ms.
Maudie describe how life data analysis of field data for one of
Motorola's products (using ReliaSoft's
Weibull++) provided timely and easily understood graphical
information about the reliability of products in the field, which
was used to support management decisions.
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Which ReliaSoft applications do you currently use, and how long have
you been using them?
I
presently use Weibull++ version 5 and have been using it for about 3
years.
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What, if
any, reliability analysis software packages did you use prior to using
ReliaSoft applications?
I have reviewed
both Relex and SuperSMITH.
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Have you
been able to reduce your test and/or analysis time due to use of ReliaSoft
applications?
Our analysis
time of field failures has been greatly reduced.
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Have the use
of ReliaSoft applications made it easier to spot potential problems with
products under test?
It has greatly
helped us to identify our field failure causes and provide focus on
eliminating them. In addition, we have been able to provide our customers
with evidence of our ability to reduce our field failure rates.
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Have you
been able to increase the reliability of your products due to use of
ReliaSoft applications?
Yes, most
definitely. It has helped us prioritize which field failures, if
eliminated, will have the largest impact for our customers.
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What do you
like the best about ReliaSoft applications?
The
user-friendly interface and the ability to paste in data from Excel. I
also like the details provided in the plots and the Parameter Estimator.
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What would
you like to see ReliaSoft do in the future to improve current
applications, or add to the current family of tools?
I am not as
familiar with your accelerated life test analysis software (ALTA), but I
would like to see it have the ability to model other stresses, such as
dielectric strength and metal fatigue. [NOTE: This is available in
ALTA and ALTA PRO.]
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