Abstract:

New integrated quality and reliability models and analysis tools are being developed to aid in the successful development and commercialization of certain novel and evolving technologies. We are developing reliability models for systems composed of degrading components being subjected to a shock process. The traditional decoupling of quality and reliability is inadequate or inappropriate for many recently developed device types and technologies because of unique design or manufacturing challenges including dimensional tolerances or evolving manufacturing processes. Specific research tasks in this project are to develop an integrated quantitative methodology to jointly optimize system quality and reliability and to investigate reliability models for multiple failure processes and complex multi-component systems. Without effective and innovative research on quality and reliability, the continued advancement of many promising technologies may not reach its full potential. To successfully achieve these objectives, the new models integrate multidisciplinary research areas: quality and reliability engineering, probability and statistics, multi-objective optimization methods, and system design and manufacturing. The models and optimization approaches resulting from this research represent research advancements that may ultimately lead to effective quality and reliability improvement for other developing technologies.