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Technical Analysis

Why do technical analysis?

Technical analysis is necessary to validate or disprove engineering hypotheses. Analysis also provides feedback to design and manufacturing teams, and supports industrialization functions like fixture design and tooling.

There are many different types of technical analysis, ranging from spreadsheet models to complex simulations to collective analysis.  Different types of products and markets have very different requirements in some cases, while other types of analysis—FMEAs and DFx for example—apply to almost anything.

Zebulon Solutions provides technical analysis for all phases of product development

FMEA

Failure Mode Effect Analysis, or FMEA, is used to predict potential failure modes due to design (DFMEA) or process (PFMEA).  When done properly, FMEA’s allow for proactive solutions before problems occur, before returns come back from the field, before yield crashes.  An FMEA can also save money on actual testing by focusing on the items most in need of test, be it at the verification, validation, production or out-of-the-box audits.

Tolerance analysis

Tolerances—be they mechanical, electrical, optical or whatever—have a severe impact on both product functionality but also manufacturability.  In particular, tolerance stack ups—where one component aligns to a second which in turn aligns to a third, and so on, instead of all aligning to a datum—can destroy yields and even reliability.  Geometric Dimensioning & Tolerancing (GD&T) is one variant of this type of analysis

DFx

DFx—design for manufacturing / assembly / test / fabrication / cost / supply chain—analysis is fundamental to closing the feedback loop during the design phase.  Over 80% of a product’s cost is locked in during the first 20% of the design.  DFx should be conducted iteratively at each sub-phase of the design—it is not wise to wait until the design is complete. Checklists are a vital tool.

Other types of analysis

There are many other types of analysis that may be needed depending on the nature of the design and the specialized requirements of the product.  Diverse examples include:

· Finite element analysis (FEA)

· Power consumption

· Circuit simulation

· Carbon footprint

· Mean time to failure (MTTF)

· Monte Carlo simulation

· Test coverage

· Many more

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