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.