Title: Product failure root cause analysis during warranty analysis for integrated product design and quality improvement for early results in downturn economy

Authors: Sudripto De, Arindam Das, Ashish Sureka

Addresses: Infosys Technologies Limited, Electronics City, Hosur Road, Bangalore 560100, India. ' Infosys Technologies Limited, Electronics City, Hosur Road, Bangalore 560100, India. ' Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, NSIT Campus, Dwarka, Sector 3, New Delhi 110078, India

Abstract: We present a Root Cause Analysis model for warranty failures that integrates the field failure data with the design improvement and internal quality-management data. Key features of the proposed model are: Ontology-Relationship-Diagram (ORD) to depict the Failure-Modes and Effect-Analysis (FMEA) data, conversion of ORD into a Bayesian Network (BN) in context to a Corrective Action Reports (CAR), usage of warranty claims data as the transactional data input to the BN to elicit probabilistic inference for warranty failure, application of text-processing technique for unstructured to structured data conversion. The benefits are reduction of Detection-To-Correction (DTC) cycle time and reduce liability exposure.

Keywords: warranty data analysis; RCA; root cause analysis; ORD; ontology relationship diagram; Bayesian networks; FMEA; failure mode and effects analysis; CAR; corrective action report; probabilistic inference; DTC; detection-to-correction; CAPA; corrective anctions; preventive actions; product design; quality improvement; product warranty; quality management; liability exposure.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPD.2010.036389

International Journal of Product Development, 2010 Vol.12 No.3/4, pp.235 - 253

Published online: 02 Nov 2010 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article