Environmental stress screening experiment using the Taguchi method

Abstract

Sun Microsystems has strived to be a leader in the workstation market. To maintain and advance in this leadership role, manufacturing process improvements which increase productivity, decrease test process time, and improve customer satisfaction are being pursued. The application of environmental stress screening is a method of achieving these improvements This experiment identifies the significance or relevancy of the selected stress screens for application in the PWA production process by using a statistically significant controlled method. The design of experiments statistical approach (analysis of variance), is applied, combined with the Taguchi two-level, seven-factor design method. This experiment concentrated on three stresses, (temperature cycling, random vibration, power cycling) and two diagnostic levels (a prom- based power-on self test-POST, and a functional test suite-Sundiag). Note that this is not an optimization experiment. Once the significance to the production process is identified, future optimizing of temperature cycling, power cycling, and vibration screens will be conducted. Also, voltage margining is not included so as to reduce the complexity of the experiment-treatment factors and interactions.<>