Introducion:

While it is generally believed that reliability prediction methods should be used to aid in product design and product development, the integrity and auditability of the traditional prediction methods have been found to be questionable; in that the models do not predict field failures, cannot be used for comparative purposes, and present misleading trends and relations. This paper presents a historical overview of reliability predictions for electronics, discusses the traditional reliability prediction approaches, and then presents an effective alternative which is becoming widely accepted.

Complete article is available to CALCE Consortium Members.