Reliability Lab Testing, Consulting, Training.

Ops a la Carte

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Engineering Success with Reliable Products.

Reliability Analysis

Reliability for Start-ups

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FREE WEBINAR - September 2, 2015 Host: Ops A La Carte Speaker: John Cooper, Senior Reliability Engineer and Instructor Time: 12:00pm-1:00pm Pacific TimeWhether you are in a startup company, pressed to meet a demanding schedule, or if you are in reliability engineering and are offering services to a startup, it’s important to understand how startup companies operate, and what their needs are in regards to product reliability. Many startups today are fast-paced, driven by young college grads, and often funded through crowdsharing. They may be sponsored by one of several well-known venture capital incubators. One of the challenges in modern reliability engineering is to help management and engineers understand the value and process of reliability engineering. In an electronic company, …

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Using a Warranty Event Cost Model to Drive Warranty Cost Reduction Strategy

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FREE RELIABILITY EVENT Sept 10, 2014: Free Webinar 12pm-1pm PDT Using a Warranty Event Cost Model to Drive Warranty Cost Reduction Strategy Speaker: Robert Mueller Date: Wednesday, Sept 10, 2014 (12pm-1pm PDT) Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now at: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/605179322 Many organizations have become excellent at tracking both their product's field failures and determining component reliability for current products from field repair data. These component reliability and product field failure rates now need to be converted to fully loaded warranty costs. Only when the 'cost' of a component's failure is expressed in its fully burdened dollars can the relative importance & priority to mitigate that failure mode can best be evaluated. Putting it …

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Mechanical Failure Mechanisms and Reliability

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Reliability Curves Mechanical failure can occur at any point in a product life cycle. These can be divided into infant mortality, constant failure rate, and wear out. As shown in the diagram, which is a plot of failure rate as a function of time, the individual curves of these three different classes of failure mechanisms sum together to form the classic bathtub curve of observed failure rate.   Infant Mortality Infant mortality occurs early during product use. The failure rate declines as a function of time, so reliability actually increases until a point is reached where the constant failure rate becomes dominant and the infant rate becomes negligible. The Weibull Distribution is used to model the infant mortality period. A wear-in or burn-in period may be used to screen out …

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Functional Safety: Reliability Prediction vs. Reliability Demonstration

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An adaption of the Functional Safety standards IEC 61508 and IEC 26262 by the European Union brought a new life into slowly fading activity of reliability prediction. Both reliability prediction and reliability demonstration are now key parts of many product development programs, however despite phonetic similarity those two have little in common as well as the result they generate.  While reliability prediction is an analytical activity often based on mathematical combination of reliabilities of parts or components comprising the system; reliability demonstration is based on product testing and is statistically driven by the test sample size.  Therefore the obtained results could drastically differ.  For example, a predicted system failure rate of 30 FIT (30 failures per billion (109) …

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Robust Design and Reliability Activities

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Robust Design & Reliability       I delivered a webinar recently  to  describe   the  differences and similarities between robust design (RD)  activities and reliability engineering (RE)  activities in hardware product development .  A survey we took from   several hundred attendees indicated a diversity of opinions. About half the participants indicated they did not differentiate at all between the two methodologies.  Approximately 20 % indicated they did differentiate between the two methodologies, and about 30% indicated that they did not know. I was quite surprised at the result, especially since participants came  from  working quality engineers, reliability engineers, engineering directors, system engineers, etc.  Somewhere along the way,  the  differences and similarities …

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Empowering companies to create happy customers, with well-engineered products.

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OPS A La Carte, Engineering Success with Reliable Products. We are a leading reliability engineering consulting firm since 2001. We have helped many companies create robust products and elevate them to great success, even become the leader in their industry. We are known for providing the whole gamut of reliability lab testing, consulting, and training. With over 25 reliability engineer-experts around the world, with diverse backgrounds and experience, we serve both domestic and global businesses in all areas of reliability, in depth and width. Hi, my name is Jay Muns, owner and CEO. I have more than 30 years of experience in engineering and business operations.

OPS A La Carte have produced very high-quality results for us, with fast turnaround times. Their engineers are the best in their field, are a pleasure to work with, and their work is of the highest standards available. This has helped us obtain critical product approvals…” We help companies see from outside of their forest and understand what they didn’t know before. Companies come to us out of three scenarios: First, when their products fail. We help put out the fire by identifying problems and providing solutions. Second, after a product is designed, to check the box and move on with getting their product into the marketplace. The best is third: to get engaged early, by including reliability as a part of their initial product design goals. This will save time, money and energy. It is much better to have a worry-free product that addresses reliability issues upfront, than dealing with deficiencies after a product is developed, or worse, already manufactured and sold to the end users. Being proactive with reliability engineering will save a business tons of money and trouble. In all scenarios, you receive professional expertise with integrity and at a fair price. Many of our clients are repeat customers for years because of the value we consistently deliver.

Our ENGINEER-consultants each have over 20 years of experience and perform lab testing, consulting and training based on actual reliability science. They follow well established industry standards, such as “HALT” (highly accelerated life test,) and “HASS” (highly accelerated stress screen.) These engineers evaluate, make recommendations and validate results based on highly relevant lab data, co-relating to real world data. Whether your company has a reliability department or not, you can take advantage of our entire testing-consulting-training package, or any portion of it. We also offer Failure analysis and safety certification services such as UL, CE, and other environmental testing services, like solar, UV, SALT spray testing, ESD (electro-static discharge,) and EMC (electro-magnetic compatibility.)

“Ops A La Carte trained us to use HALT methodology as a proactive tool, to root out key failures in our early and advanced prototypes, and that made it possible for us to deliver dependability that our customers demand, in pilot and production units."“...OPS has played a key role in our evolution from a research company to a manufacturer of ‘mission-critical’ components.” A couple of companies describe our HALT/HASS training as “highly informative, engaging and exciting.” “The benefit far exceeds the price."

Our mission is to enable companies to create their happy customers, with a well-engineered product. By helping our clients understand the real problems and the real solutions, we help improve their careers and reputations. Achieving the win-win-win results for our clients and their customers is our ultimate satisfaction. We have a family-like company culture with positive energy and great teamwork. An improved and reliable product is our own small way to contribute to a better humanity and a slightly better world. Call us at (408) 654-0499, or email us at info@opsalacarte.com, or visit our website www.opsalacarte.com. Thank you!

A couple of our clients' testimonials:

"The expert team at OPS assisted us in evaluating the available reliability testing possibilities, and with their help, we crafted a customized test program precisely sized to meet the needs of our project. The resulting program proved to our team, our customers, and our regulatory auditors that our product was robust, met its reliability goals effectively, and satisfied all safety risk factors."

"...Ops A La Carte worked with us to develop a testing program based on HALT and HASS to effectively assess low-temperature operation capability and screen the boards for assembly and component defects. They then facilitated and supported the HALT and HASS testing effort. It was quicker and more efficient than we had expected. The boards for the first four strings have been delivered. We are looking forward to working with them through completion of the project."