Water Flow Control Technology
Our client is a world leader in automated water flow control technology for river and irrigation networks.
- Client
- Confidential
- Product
- Water flow control technology
They had engaged a contract manufacturer to produce the control electronics, however, early field trials revealed unacceptably high failure rates. Therefore, before committing to further investment they wanted to ensure field reliability and engaged Invetech to assist.
Our Ingenuity
Our client had done an excellent job recording and classifying the different failure modes exhibited in the field. We undertook an analysis of this data and conducted a Failure Mode Effect Cause Analysis and identified three areas for focused investigation:
- Manufacturing processes
- The suitability of the design to withstand the operating environment
- Uncontrolled software releases
In collaboration with our client, and drawing on our team of electrical and mechanical engineers, we reviewed the hardware and electronics housing design, the manufacturing process and the processes for releasing software.
The review resulted in a number of new procedures. We recommended some hardware design changes to improve the suitability of the unit to withstand the harsh operating environment. For the manufacturing process we recommended:
- Introduction of automated testing equipment at the manufacturer to conduct in-circuit, functional and accelerated stress testing of electronics assemblies
- more extensive final system testing conducted after final assembly at our client's facility
- For the software process we recommended more structured testing and release process:
- A software regression test plan, and
- verification of software/hardware changes prior to release to manufacture.
Your Advantage
On our advice our client made minor hardware changes and introduced new testing and verification processes during development and manufacture.
Combined, these changes ensured a significant reduction of in-field failures.
