Considered to be one very important discipline in many branches of manufacturing industry is failure analysis. It is a process that relies on collecting failed components that are brought to subsequent examination to find the cause(s) of failure. It effectively helps particularly in the following:
Refinement of an existing product -- many products found in the market today can still be refined with the help of failure analysis; this is with the help of several procedures including collecting data of their failed components, which are brought to a laboratory for analysis in order to determine the cause and act accordingly.
Development of new products -- in many cases, a discovery of a certain cause of failure cannot just be useful for the refinement of the existing one but, of equal importance, can lead to the development of new/other products, which can be useful to both manufacturers and consumers as well.
Cost reductions -- failure analysis, which helps in determining the cause of failure, reduces costs as manufacturing companies can use better materials and avoid unnecessary spending and wasting, which therefore can help reduce materials and operational costs and improves profits.
There are two popular categories under 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 -- very helpful for process optimization when issues like prevalent shrinking of materials utilized in the process arise. Should a manufacturing facility face issues like mentioned, it can do physical failure analysis (it has the option to do it on its own or hire a third party to do the job) such as Deprocessing, De-capsulation, Mechanical Cross-Sectioning, FIB-SEM Cross Sectioning, 3D X-ray Tomography, C-scanning acoustic Microscopy, Real-time X-ray - among other physical failure analysis.
More and more companies in the manufacturing sector have recognized the importance of failure analysis and have incorporated this procedure in their own system for new product development or refinement of existing ones.
Refinement of an existing product -- many products found in the market today can still be refined with the help of failure analysis; this is with the help of several procedures including collecting data of their failed components, which are brought to a laboratory for analysis in order to determine the cause and act accordingly.
Development of new products -- in many cases, a discovery of a certain cause of failure cannot just be useful for the refinement of the existing one but, of equal importance, can lead to the development of new/other products, which can be useful to both manufacturers and consumers as well.
Cost reductions -- failure analysis, which helps in determining the cause of failure, reduces costs as manufacturing companies can use better materials and avoid unnecessary spending and wasting, which therefore can help reduce materials and operational costs and improves profits.
There are two popular categories under 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 -- very helpful for process optimization when issues like prevalent shrinking of materials utilized in the process arise. Should a manufacturing facility face issues like mentioned, it can do physical failure analysis (it has the option to do it on its own or hire a third party to do the job) such as Deprocessing, De-capsulation, Mechanical Cross-Sectioning, FIB-SEM Cross Sectioning, 3D X-ray Tomography, C-scanning acoustic Microscopy, Real-time X-ray - among other physical failure analysis.
More and more companies in the manufacturing sector have recognized the importance of failure analysis and have incorporated this procedure in their own system for new product development or refinement of existing ones.
About the Author:
Paul Drake writes various industry-related topics and his work experience in a high tech company helps in doing the job. To learn more about failure analysis, visit Nanolab Technologies official website.