Learning from Product Warranty Field Data Analysis

Abstract

SUMMARY & CONCLUSIONSCompanies that grant a product warranty policy must have a warranty claims management information system. Warranty claims can be used to estimate product reliability and combined with a structured process to learn the dominant failure modes throughout the product warranty period. This knowledge can leverage the improvement of product reliability, as well as the product and production processes development system. A key success factor of such structured process is to bring back representative samples of service calls products and components replaced in the field, to be submitted to a detailed failure analysis. The findings of such failure analysis can reveal the dominant failure modes and the respective causes of them. This approach is presented here as a roadmap for implementing a reliability improvement program, using warranty claims data and samples failure analysis as a starting point. As a result, improved product reliability within the warranty period will lead to reduced warranty costs.