HALT & HASS + Workshop

by Mr. Kirk Gray, BSEE

This two-day seminar is intended to provide both theory and practice in HALT and HASS to those who want to learn enough about the methods to perform them well without assistance.

Second, emphasis is given to the use of the methods in the production phase (HASS) to ensure robust manufacturing processes at suppliers, at top level assembly, and everywhere in between: shipping, handling, and storage.

Correct application of HALT and HASS results in cost savings and reliability improvements that are orders of magnitude better than those attained using traditional approaches.

Many leaders in reliability throughout the world are using these methods, but most do not publish their results to maintain their technological and financial lead!

The seminar closely follows content from the text HALT & HASS, Accelerated Reliability Engineering by Dr. Gregg K. Hobbs, the inventor of the methods.  This is the original and most complete book on the subject, a copy of which is given to each seminar participant.

Participants have reported enormous benefits including:

• Reduction of product development time and cost by a factor of 2!
• Return on investment of 50:1 in the first year!
• Hundreds of millions of dollars saved in 2 ½ years!
• Reduction in Validation or Demo Test costs by orders of magnitude!
• Greatly reduced warranty and field retrofitting costs! One Company had a 90% reduction of warranty returns – 5% to 0.5% after implementing HALT and HASS
• Vast reduction in screening and test equipment costs!
• Detect those “No Defects Found” in field returns!  The “Magic Bullet”!

EQUIPMENT  NECESSARY  for HALT & HASS

• Vibration Systems – pros and cons.
• Thermal Systems – pros and cons.
• Power Spectral Density Plots of the various shakers available.
• Use of pseudo products for control in order to speed screens.
• Comparison of compressor and LN₂ systems.
• Vendor selection, a very critical and long lasting decision.
• Some results from industry.

WORKSHOP

• Introduction to the product to be tested
• Circuit diagram discussion
• Monitoring of the product
• Discussion of what is to be accomplished
• Disassembly of the products for inspection
• Discussion of Observations
• Defining stress operational and destruct limits
• Bench Tests of the products as out of box
• Fixturing to the shaker
• Installation of accelerometers & thermocouples
• Air flow for optimal thermal stress
• Setup of the monitoring system
• Introduction to HALT equipment & operating techniques
• Step stress in temperature
• Step Stress in vibration
• Discussion of results of HALT
• Safety of HASS
• Discussion of results
•  Review & summary