The Problem

The short lifecycle of today's electronic products creates many pressures for rapid development and manufacture of new products, or product upgrades, in order to stay ahead in the competitive market place. Take for instance, the short model life of computers and printers. A new model appears every few months. Time-to-market is short, and customers expect the new models to work "out of the box" each and every time.

These pressures can result in compromised product development and/or manufacturing problems caused by part, process, and workmanship defects. The result is increased manufacturing costs, warranty costs, impacted profit margins, and sadly worse, customer dissatisfaction with resulting loss of market share.