End-of-Life Management of Electronics ProductsThrough Functional Signature Analysis

摘要

This paper presents a functional signature analysis method for the end-of-life management of products, particularly forrnelectrical-electronics and electromechanical applications.rnDue to the fast (r)evolution of electronics and, related, software new functionality becomes available in at an increasingly fastrnrate. This means that, quite often, products are economically outdated before the technical end-of-life of a product is reached.rnThis is a far from optimal situation; often good working products are discarded because they are economically outdated withrnall negative side-effects not only in financial terms but also with respect to terms of ecology. In this respect the ability tornanalyze and predict the (remaining) technical life of a product would enable manufacturers either to re-use good subassembliesrnin the manufacturing process of new products or to design products with such design margins that economicalrnand technical lifetime match. This requires models with the ability to predict function performance degradation over life.rnTherefore, this project aims at defining methods (and related tools) to extract the mentioned indicators by analyzing thernfunction performance over life and to have a single measure of the reliability performance to identify source of failure andrnperformance deterioration by signals available for external measurement.rnThe signature analysis method uses a complete new approach, which differs significantly from methods used in preventivernmaintenance, designing for reliability, or on-line monitoring of quality characteristics in production processes. This paperrnpresents the signature analysis method. The protocol for carrying out the signature analysis is discussed and the applicationrnof functional signature analysis for end-of-life management is reviewed.