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Instrument Panel Stepper Motor Failures
Background
- OEM and Tier 1 Interiors supplier involved in expensive warranty repairs
- Intermittent field failures being investigated by experts from OEM and Tier 1
- Testing designed to reproduce failure mode taking 1 to 2 days to execute
- Stepper Motor costing less than 1€ cost 1000€ to repair
Approach
- Design tests to characterize the devices behavior rather than reproduce attribute failure (stuck pointer)
- Tests were able to be conducted in seconds, within a small production sample size
- Performance of the system was able to be observed quickly, enabling convergence on a causal explanation
Results
- Causal explanation determined problem was in the injection molding process for one of the components
- Took less than 2 days to understand and fully evaluate the system behavior - the equivalent time it took to run 1 test to failure
- Applied diagnostic approach to test samples submitted for reliability validation
- Eliminated possibility of poor performing motors from passing the testing
By the Numbers
999€ / unit
Warranty cost avoidance for future production
2 Days
Time to Solve the Problem