About the Training Course

Unlike the typical equipment manufacturer’s HALT and HASS seminar that simply expounds success stories and testimonials, this course actually teaches the latest techniques. Taught by the inventor of HALT and HASS, we begin with the science behind why it works, provide the hard engineering and physics, and explain why the failures accelerated through higher stress levels are essential to developing reliable products. The course offers step-by-step instruction on why, how, and when to perform HALT, how to correctly set-up and tune HASS profiles on production units, and how to prove that the HASS profiles leave enough life left, so the products can be confidently sold to customers.
You will learn how to vastly improve design margins and eliminate process problems using the highly accelerated techniques taught by their originator. Emphasis is placed on environmental and other stress stimulation methods applied in the design phase in order to force accelerated design and process maturity using HALT. This allows earlier product introduction and obtains very robust design margins, leading to greater field reliability. Emphasis is also given to the application of HASS during the production phase to insure process and design control.
The second day of the class provides greater depth in stimulation, precipitation and detection methods and covers advanced HASS optimization and methods for doing production HASS on high volume products on a sample basis. Information is also provided that can help engineers “SELL” the program to upper management. Case studies are presented as learning experiences on how to perform HALT and HASS correctly; and sufficient time is spent discussing customized approaches for product samples brought to the seminar by attendees.
The majority of attendees leave the seminar equipped with the ability to implement their own HALT and HASS programs. Individualized remote and onsite consulting and equipment set-up/troubleshooting are also available.
The techniques are continually being refined "with advancements such as HyperHALT, which was introduced in 2007". We offer this updated course at a 50% discount to previous attendees.

Training Course Objective

These classes equip participants with detailed technical knowledge of HALT (Highly Accelerated Life Tests) and HASS (Highly Accelerated Stress Screens). This will enable you to successfully initiate world-class highly accelerated design margin enhancement programs and highly accelerated production stress screen programs. Many of the subtle details required for successful use of the techniques are presented only in this seminar and are not published elsewhere. A recent addition is Rapid HALT, which is available free to previous seminar attendees in the form of a short paper.

Who is this training course for?

The HALT & HASS Seminar is appropriate for managers, executive officers, design engineers, quality & reliability engineers, and production staff involved in Highly Accelerated Stress Screening including failure analysis. Some high level managers will want to attend only the first few hours which is a Management Overview.

Benefits

Participants have reported enormous benefits including:

• Return on investment of 50:1 in the first year!
• Dramatically increased field reliability, 838 times improvement in one case!
• Greatly reduced warranty and field retrofitting costs!
• Reduction of product development time!
• Reduced time to market!
• Virtual elimination of field failures!
• One company reported a savings of $30 million in one year!
• Another company reported savings of over $200 million in three years!
• Reduction in REL-DEMO costs by orders of magnitude!
• Substantial savings in manufacturing costs! Almost no scrap and rework!
• Vast reduction in screening and test equipment costs!
• Elimination of "No Defects Found" in field returns!

Training Course Content and Outline

This seminar will cover the latest methods for finding weak links in designs and processes that cause field failures in products. Emphasis is placed on environmental and electrical stimulation applied in the design phase (HALT) in order to force accelerated design and process maturity. This technique allows earlier (mature) product introduction and obtains robust design margins. Emphasis is also given to the use of the methods in the production phase (HASS) to assure process and design control. Either application results in cost savings and reliability improvements that are orders of magnitude better than those attained using the traditional approaches. Many leaders in reliability throughout the world are using the methods. Every aspect of the HALT & HASS processes is covered, including step stress testing, burn-in, voltage cycling, vibration, thermal cycling, other stresses as appropriate and cumulative fatigue damage as well as screens for parts, assemblies and systems. Physics of failure, test coverage and resolution, equipment required and management issues will also be discussed. The extreme non-linearities found in vibration of electronics and fixturing for both vibration and thermal cycling are covered. Several case studies are discussed and critiqued in class. Most of the leaders in the application of accelerated screening technology learned from these seminars. The majority of them are not publishing complete results in order to maintain their technological and financial lead! Many do not publish at all!

• INTRODUCTION
• Overall HALT & HASS processes from start to finish in one slide.
• Origin of the methods and how they developed through the years.
• Load-Strength relationships and how they relate to failures in the field.
• Modulated Excitation, the great detector, and why it should be used.
• Crossover Effect—a very important concept and one frequently missed.
• Some examples of the Crossover Effect.
• The Bathtub Curve and how HALT & HASS change it.
• Stresses used for particular applications and in general.
• Various methods in “success” and “discovery” testing.
• Discipline interactions in HALT & HASS.
• Some failure modes and mathematical expressions of them.
• Definition of terms for operational and destruct limits.
• Basic application of HALT & HASS and how to perform them.
• Why 6 Sigma will work well only after HALT.
• What the operational and destruct limits look like on a chart.
• Where to stop improving the product in a logical way.
• Proper selection of stresses for HASS profile for a particular case using the HALT data.
• Seven basic parts of HALT & HASS.
• Comparisons of philosophies of Mil-Spec and accelerated methods.
• Benefits of HALT & HASS.
• Comparisons of costs when vibration and thermal stresses are increased.
• Some successes from various fields.
• Summary of Management Overview.
• HALT IN DETAIL
• Substituting stress level for sample size.
• Major mistakes made by many and how to avoid them.
• How many samples would be necessary at field stress levels?
• How to find the limits. Only the first step! Improvement is the desired step.
• Guidelines in step stress testing for beginners and experienced engineers.
• Some very important points missed by many that have led to disasters.
• Margins obtained in graphical representation and how distributions affect them.
• A few critical guidelines for vibration and why they must be followed.
• How four-corner testing without modulated excitation can lead to disaster.
• HALT on super fast track products, some examples.
• How to become “product smart” and not forget the lessons learned.
• How many units to HALT and when.
• Uses for HALT units.
• Assembly levels on which to perform HALT and why.
• Where to perform HALT.
• Where should one stop and why.
• Comparison of the classical and HALT spending rates over time.
• HALT process flow diagram.
• Disciplines required to perform HALT.
• Lessons learned database.
• Some disastrous mistakes made by many in a HALT program.
• HASS
• Some screens used on parts, assemblies and systems.
• Selecting the stress magnitudes from the HALT results.
• Precipitation and Detection screens and why.
• Examples of what was found in some detection screens and why.
• What a good HASS profile must do.
• Progressing to a sample—HASA (Highly Accelerated Stress Audit).
• Some products HASSed.
• PROOF OF HASS – very important
• Safety of HASS and why it must be performed.
• How to perform Safety of HASS.
• Why not to run the product to end of life to prove Safety of HASS.
• HASS Effectiveness and why it should not be performed.
• HASS OPTIMIZATION
• How to optimize profiles for minimum cost and maximum effectiveness.
• Several examples of optimization.
• Convergence.
• Some incorrect approaches to selecting screens and why they have led to disasters of large scale.
• The “typical HASS profile.”
• How to achieve solder joint creep failure and how not to.
• Why tight uniformity and repeatability are not generally necessary.
• Examples from the literature.
• PHYSICS OF FAILURE
• Why things fail and how.
• Main activities of Physics of Failure.
• Some examples showing time compression and flaws detected.
• SOFTWARE HALT™ – Fault insertion to determine coverage and resolution and improve them.
• Insertion types and pros and cons of each.
• Results for a few products.
• Shipped defect levels as a function of coverage and yield for PCBs.
• Automated Signal Integrity Testing.
• Time domain reflectometry.
• EQUIPMENT NECESSARY for HALT & HASS
• Vibration Systems – pros and cons.
• Thermal Systems – pros and cons.
• Cost impact of selections is very large, maybe even critical.
• A few considerations of failure modes and how to excite them.
• Probability distributions 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 use examples from industry.
• CONCLUSIONS, RECOMMENDATIONS AND PITFALLS TO AVOID
• Ways of accomplishing the goals.
• Proof of Concept.
• Getting management to accept HALT & HASS.
• Examples of some failures to convince and why they occurred.
• Other uses of HALT.
• A checklist on performing your own HALT or for grading others.
• Outsourcing—the double-edged sword!
• Pitfalls to avoid in HALT & HASS.
• How to perform HALT & HASS on attendees’ products.

About the Lecturer

Gregg K. Hobbs, Ph.D.,
a Registered Professional Engineer,

Gregg, a Registered Professional Engineer in California in Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, and Control System Engineering, is the originator of and world leader in the principles of HALT and HASS. He has been a consulting engineer since 1978, specializing in the fields of stress screening, robust and flaw tolerant design, dynamic analysis, and testing. He has been employed as a consultant by many leading companies in the aerospace, commercial, military, and industrial fields and has taught at two major universities as Adjunct Professor (Visiting Full Professor). He has taught courses on these subjects in the USA, Asia, Canada, Europe, the UK, Africa, the South Pacific, Middle-East and Mexico.
He has introduced, and continues to introduce, many new concepts, techniques, and equipment that have been proven by 36 years extensive use on many products, resulting in the savings of several billions of dollars. He has acted as "facilitator" for companies beginning to use these methods and has led teams that enhanced designs using the techniques, selected equipment, and then developed production screens.
Currently the inventor of 14 patents on accelerated testing equipment (several more pending), Dr. Hobbs has written many important papers on accelerated techniques and has introduced a number of new concepts in various other technical fields. His book, HALT & HASS, Accelerated Reliability Engineering, is now in its second edition and is available from Hobbs Engineering.
Over the past 30 years, Dr. Hobbs has shown thousands of engineers throughout the world how to improve the quality of their products through the application of his HALT and HASS accelerated reliability techniques. RapidHALT™, introduced in 2003, has reduced the time in HALT substantially. Other significant improvements in the HALT and HASS methodologies were made by Dr. Hobbs in 2004. HyperHALT™ was introduced in 2007.