Flexible time reduction method for burn-in of high-quality products

Burn-in is an effective method to screen out early failures of electronic devices. Typically, this is achieved by operating the devices under accelerated stress conditions. This paper focuses on a burn-in concept where a random sample of devices is drawn out of the running production, put to burn-in, and investigated for early failures. This procedure is called burn-in study. In parallel, as long as the burn-in study is ongoing, all other produced devices are subjected to burn-in screening. In this article, new flexible sampling plans for burn-in studies are introduced. These are based on the progress of these studies and defined quality targets. Furthermore, these sampling plans enable fast burn-in time reductions and various time reduction strategies. From a statistical point of view, this requires to combine the proportion of early failures in a population with their lifetime distribution function. The new model is illustrated by case studies and simulations. It contributes to burn-in cost reductions, while controlling quality levels at the same time.