In message <380E3822.968F48FA@buffnet.net>, Roger Morella writes >Preface: We have a situation where our customer is asking that we keep >our failure rates at what seems to us to be an unacceptable limit. >While we strive to keep our failure rates as low as possible, there are >practical limits to how low you can go. This is why we typically give a >1 year warrenty on most of our industrial products. How low are they expecting your product to achieve?. >Questions: >In your opinion, what is an acceptable failure rate for electronic >control assemblies in an industrial product? It all depends on how and why they fail, if the same part keeps failing it's most probably a design fault and should be corrected. However, if they all fail in different ways, perhaps it's down to how they are being used, or the environment they are used in?. >What about in consumer products? As above, failure rate should be low if the unit is correctly designed, and built using decent spec components. One of the most common failures in TV's (and a recurring one for many, many years!) is resistors in series/parallel going O/C. Instead of using a resistor large enough to take the wattage, it's common practice in TV to use 2 or 3 small resistor in either series or parallel - this is extremely unreliable, and I would consider this a major design flaw!. >What do you feel is a fair warrenty period for industrial products? I don't think the consumer legislation in the UK applies to industrial products, but I think most still comes with a 12 month guarantee. >What is fair for consumer products? In the UK all consumer products have to be guaranteed for 12 months. -- Nigel. /--------------------------------------------------------------\ | Nigel Goodwin | Internet : nigelg@lpilsley.demon.co.uk | | Lower Pilsley | Web Page : http://www.lpilsley.demon.co.uk | | Chesterfield | Official site for Shin Ki and New Spirit | | England | Ju Jitsu | \--------------------------------------------------------------/