Discover an often overlooked approach to pass product testing on the first attempt and avoid costly delays that lead to lost sales and unhappy customers.
Have you ever experienced the frustration of a product failing critical testing? You're not alone – many companies have faced setbacks because their products couldn’t withstand the rigors of testing, leading to product delays and lost sales, lost market share, and frustrated customers.
A common reason for failed product testing is that the materials in a product are unable to withstand exposure to the test conditions. The materials degrade too much during testing, and components fail. So, the problem must be fixed and the product put through additional, often unplanned, testing.
This happens too frequently because materials engineering is overlooked by many design teams. The result – selection of sub-optimum materials.
The good news is that many of these failures are preventable. At Industrial Metallurgists, LLC, we use a systematic approach to help engineering teams identify the right materials from the start, conduct pre-testing, and make informed decisions that virtually guarantee success when it's time for product testing. Instead of hoping for the best, you can move forward with confidence that the materials provide the reliability needed for your products.
We help companies design products that pass product testing.
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Risks of failing product testing can be mitigated by identifying options of materials and testing the materials prior to product testing. This is where materials engineering expertise is needed. This expertise includes knowledge of different materials and their properties, the response of materials to use conditions, and how to characterize materials.
The approach we use involves applying materials engineering to optimize the design of critical components so they meet performance and reliability requirements at low cost. Our approach consists of a few steps:
Design requirements include requirements for performance, reliability, fabrication, cost, etc. The more thorough and accurate the requirements, the better the chances of identifying good options. Reliability requirements are based on the use conditions and test conditions.
The testing is performed in parallel with other design efforts. The testing is similar to product testing, but without building the entire product. The materials are exposed to the test conditions, then evaluated to assess whether degradation occurred and the extent of the degradation.
Many companies do not have materials engineers on staff. Instead, engineers from other fields make decisions and solve problems that involve materials. These are skilled engineers, but they have little or no training in materials science and engineering and their expertise is not in materials selection, materials characterization, and the effects of use and process conditions on materials. As a result, decisions that affect the materials used are sub-optimum, products don't pass product testing, and delays occur.
Leveraging materials engineering is a powerful approach to improve the likelihood of passing product testing on the first attempt. It’s a relatively low-cost approach and often results in large ROI. Also, it doesn’t require a culture change or implementation of a new engineering process. As simple as it is, this approach can sometimes be transformative.
We offer metallurgy consulting to help with product design and manufacturing decisions and problems. If you need help, let's talk for 15 minutes. Use this brief form to get started.
Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. is President of Industrial Metallurgists and a metallurgical engineering consultant with more than 30 years of experience in product design, manufacturing, failure analysis, and metallurgy training. He helps clients worldwide solve design and manufacturing problems and is the author of Materials Enabled Designs.
