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This paper approaches failure analysis in electronics under design for reliability (DfR) point of view. Some real cases illustrate how stress/strength interference (SSI) plays an important role to understand the component failure under the perspective of strength variation within a lot, from lot to lot and from manufacturer to manufacturer and likewise, the stress applied may vary with temperature, vibration etc. Also, the paper stresses the necessity to go beyond classical reliability practice, generally associated with minimizing catastrophic failures.

Internal combustion engines are designed to meet the high power, low fuel consumption and also, low exhaust emissions. The engine running conditions is valid the concept that, the expectative is very high because of the variety of operating conditions like cold start, frequent start and stop, time high speed and load, traditional gasoline, mix of gasoline and alcohol and finally, alcohol fuel only. Considering such demand, this paper explains the relationship between the reliability bathtub curve, specifically the "Infant Mortality" portion. The bathtub curve describes failure rate as a function of time. The "Infant Mortality" portion of the curve is the initial section for which the failure (death) rate decreases with time (age). In general, these problems are related to manufacturing aspects or poor design definitions. With development of technology, hard failures, the ones that cause dependability, are becoming rare.

Experience shows that when a Electrical & Electronic concern is identified in final assembly in automotive application, the failure analysis is expensive and major time consuming to determine the real root cause tracing components, subsystems, computer software or even a combination of them. This paper discusses typical failure mechanisms for hardware — Electrical Over-Stress (EOS), electrical static discharge (ESD) and computer software catastrophic events. Avoidance of failures in software is inextricably linked to failures in the hardware (sensors and actuators). Finally, practical examples are given to illustrate how small changes can cause big incidents.

This paper presents an approach for Six Sigma strategies to reduce the occurrence of failure mechanisms. In general terms, there are two ways to reduce the failures: a) shifting or tuning - DMAIC approach or b) shrinking - DCOV approach. When shifting or tuning, we move the mean output away from the failure mode boundary and when shrinking, we reduce the variability of the output. Also, the paper illustrates with a case study - Cargo truck door opening effort check arm - where demand and capacity distributions had its distance to failure mode increased leading to high-quality low-cost alternative in vendor tooling.

This paper explores the interrelation of Six Sigma and TRIZ. The use of Six Sigma DMAIC and/or DCOV principles with merging of inventive principles of TRIZ is a suggestion of paths forward to reduce the time to solve problems. The search for solutions is paralyzed in some circumstances because of psychological inertia because of it is natural for people to rely on their own experience and not think outside their comfort spot. Six Sigma pollinated with TRIZ is an opportunity to find the ideal final result. A case study on a Truck Turn Signal is used to illustrate the idea.