Product infant failure risk modeling based on quality variation propagation and functional failure dependency

Abstract

Product infant failure is the most crucial part of product quality risk that critically affects customer satisfaction. However, most of manufacturers lack sufficient understanding of the formation mechanism of product infant failure and quantitative infant failure risk modeling technology. These issues cause the inefficiency of warranty policy in preventing and controlling infant failure risk. Therefore, first, on the basis of the reverse mapping process of axiomatic design, an infant failure risk formation chain, that is, “process quality variation—physical defect—functional vulnerability—infant failure,” is proposed in this study by considering quality variation propagation and functional failure dependency to determine the inherent formation and dependent enlarging process of the risk. Second, on the basis of the risk formation chain, the infant failure risk is modeled from inherent risk and dependent risk. Specifically, the inherent infant failure risk is computed based on the stream of quality variation in production, whereas the dependent infant failure risk is computed by a Bayesian network by considering the functional failure dependency. Finally, a case study of an illustrative electromechanical system is introduced to verify the applicability of the proposed method. Result shows that the proposed method has a better performance in infant failure risk modeling.