Real world application of burn-in to improve product quality

Burn-in screening of products can be used to significantly increase their reliability in the presence of real-world problems such as low-quality components and assembly defects. The author describes the development and application of a burn-in strategy to a 3 kW switch-mode rectifier product. Hardware and software system architectures are discussed. Two significant product problems are described and the role the burn-in system played in identifying the problems and maintaining quality product output during the course of the problem resolution is illustrated. Finally, the success of the burn-in-strategy was demonstrated with a measured field reliability of nearly 1,000,000 h mean time between failures