Why Weibull?…. Why Not! by Dr. Joseph Bernstein
Join us for our next webinar! January 22nd, 8:30 – 10:30 AM Pacific time (California)
Cost $200 per person, group discounts available! Please note, this webinar will be recorded. If the time is not convenient for you, this webinar recording link can be purchased to view at your leisure. Contact us for details.
Register here and pass this on to your colleagues!
Course Description:
Reliability professionals are required to report their product’s reliability in simple-to-understand yet meaningful metrics. Typically, Mean Time To Fail (MTTF) or Defective Parts Per Million (DPPM) is used as a way to communicate the estimated reliability of a product, device or system. Most metrics for reliability assume a constant hazard rate or constant failure rate. The technical mathematical model used for the constant-rate model is the time invariant Poisson process. This is also called an “exponential” reliability function as is well known by most industries and is the working assumption when using MTTF or other such metrics.
In reality, everyone knows that some equipment have wearout or fatigue mechanisms that accumulate over time and makes the likelihood of an older product inherently more susceptible to failure than a new piece of equipment. Similarly, companies are constantly working on reliability growth and improvement with each generation making the decision to upgrade implicitly a decision to improve long-term reliability. Defects introduced during manufacture are often seen during product introduction and decreasing failure rates are observed. The importance of understanding the mathematics behind failure prediction cannot be underestimated when a companies bottom line depends on predictable reliability estimations, including knowing if a failure rate is increasing or decreasing over time.
This 2-hour tutorial, which costs $200 per person, will focus on deeply understanding the exponential, constant rate, reliability models and how they are justified by physics of failure and basic assumptions of thermodynamics. The physics and statistics are then extended to justify the Weibull distribution to describe more accurately the failure rate trend in the field. However, this information is often lost in communication since MTTF is not appropriate once the Poisson model is no longer used. Furthermore, Weibull describes both decreasing as well as increasing failure rates and the information contained therein is lost when converted to a single MTTF parameter.
This tutorial will develop the understanding needed to make decisions about when it is appropriate and when it is not appropriate to use Weibull statistics as opposed to Poisson, MTTF, statistics. Participants will learn the tools to develop their own insight as to when the MTTF statistic is meaningful and can be used for making proper reliability decisions. Through some simple formalisms and basic understanding for thermodynamics, participants of this webinar will learn for themselves how Weibull is often a useful measure for describing reliability and how it is often inappropriately used. Our goal will be to clarify any confusion that exists as to the proper way to report reliability using single statistical metrics or when more sophisticated metrics are required.
About your instructor:
Professor Joseph Bernstein is an expert in several areas of nano-scale micro-electronic device reliability and physics of failure; including packaging, system reliability modeling, gate oxide integrity, radiation effects, Flash NAND and NOR memory, SRAM and DRAM, MEMS and laser programmable metal interconnect. He has licensed his own technology and consulted for RFID and SRAM applications related to fuse and redundancy and for programmable gate arrays and system-on-chip. He directs the Laboratory for Failure Analysis and Reliability of Electronic Systems, teaches VLSI design courses and heads the VLSI program at Ariel University. His Laboratory is a center of research activity dedicated to serving the needs of manufacturers of highly reliable electronic systems using commercially available off the shelf parts. His latest project is to qualify COTS for satellite operation and works with the FIDES European reliability standards. His formulations have become integrated throughout much of the electronics industry. He lectures around the world, presenting his common-sense approach to reliability testing and reliability. He also closely works with both testing and reliability software companies.
Cost: $200 per person. If you have five or more from the same company the price is $180 per person
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. NOTE: if you do not receive the confirmation email, please call us at 303-655-3051
