Friday, November 22, 2013

Failure Analysis - Vital To The Manufacturing Industry

By Paul Drake


Failure analysis, a process that relies on collecting failed components for subsequent examination of the cause or causes of failure, is considered as one critical discipline in many branches of manufacturing process because it can effectively help in the following:

Improving the quality of existing product -- many products that many people are using today can still be improved with the help of failure analysis. By collecting failed components and examining them to determine the cause or causes, product improvement can be attained, which can improve the level of satisfaction of customers.

New products development -- in a number of cases, a discovery of the cause of failure does not only give an opportunity to refine existing product but it opens a portal to develop a new/other products as well, which can be advantageous to both manufacturers and costumer.

Cost reductions -- using failure analysis, a manufacturing company can determine the cause of failure, which can help reduce operational costs and avoid unnecessary spending by using better materials. This can give a significant advantage to the bottomline - profit.

Two popular methods being used in failure analysis and these are the following:

Electrical failure analysis -- some examples of electrical failure analysis work can be done during dielectric breakdown, component failure, arc tracking/conductive path tracking, poor quality solder joints, floating neutrals and high voltage transients, oxidation and corrosion of electrical connections, and contamination of circuit boards. Mechanisms used as part of electrical failure analysis include Analytical Probe Station, Curve-Trace (Manual & Automated); Emission Microscopy (Near Infrared); Florescent Micro-Thermal Imaging with Lock-In; Laser Stimulation Microscopy.

Physical failure analysis -- this becomes increasingly important for process optimization for situations like when there is a continued shrinking of materials used in a certain manufacturing process. In cases like the one specified, a particular manufacturing facility can do the analysis (or hire a third party to do it) such as 3-D X-ray Tomography, C-scanning acoustic Microscopy, De-Capsulation, Deprocessing, FIB-SEM Cross Sectioning, Mechanical Cross-Sectioning, Real-time X-ray - among other physical failure analysis procedures.

A lot of companies in the manufacturing sector have recognized the essence of failure analysis and in fact, have incorporated this procedure in their own processes for product refinement and development.




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