ICON-COMPACT : 1/1/2015 - 31/12/2017

When vehicles and machinery become more complex, more intelligent, more expensive and using an increasing amount of fast evolving electronics, traditional methods of performing maintenance and Design-for-Reliability based on historical data and testing only may no longer be adequate in keeping them functioning and cost effective. New Product Introduction with a short time-to-market is essential to sustain and strengthen the competitiveness of Flanders’ industrial businesses.

As industrial products become more sophisticated, the manner in which we design, qualify, produce and maintain them must become more sophisticated. Design for Reliability should not only be seen as a different approach to design, qualification and maintenance, but also as a change in how we think about the way design, qualification and maintenance should be performed. Today, there are a lot of generic product development challenges across the different domains of the technological industry. Embedding electronics and integrating embedded software is one of them. That is where a project like this creates a major innovation. If each situation would be unique, it is “you’re on your own”. By creating generic solutions for generic problems of reliability the rewards are immense since one does not have to “reinvent the reliability wheel” every time one develops a “unique” product. Common reliability base valid for all industries and applications is the physics-of-failure.

The objective of the project is to develop a Physics-of-Failure based Design-for-Reliability and Qualification (Pof DfR & Q) methodology integrated in the overall product development process that enables the user to fundamentally improve the reliability of his products, reduce development costs and time without increasing the product cost. The methodology will combine existing best practices and integrate those in the product development process of different application domains.

The basis is the Physics-of-Failure insight and quantification of physical failures in electronics containing products. It is intended to:

·         Replace the traditional statistics and historical data based reliability assessment by a physics based modeling method with strong prediction potential for new products and applications.

·         Replace a product development method based on statistics and experience by a Physics of Failure based Design-for-Reliability and Qualification method that is more effective, at lower cost, faster and that has a better failure probability and lifetime prediction capability.

·         Integrate the methodology in the overall systems engineering lifecycle, with links to product development at both the hardware and software level and functional safety processes together with a Physics-of-Failure based upgrade of reliability related industry methods (FMEA, architectural solutions, ...).