In an increasingly harsh economic context (tighter performance requirements, shorter development cycles, reduced cost of ownership, etc.), it is essential to ensure product maturity rapidly and, in any case, by the time of commissioning.
It is with a view to remedying shortcomings in traditional development methods that "highly accelerated" tests have been developed. The main underlying principle behind this new type of test strategy is as follows: rather than reasoning in terms of conformity with a specification and simply performing conventional tests, we on the contrary attempt to push the product to its limits by applying environmental stresses and/or stimuli of levels higher than the specification. The aim is thus to take full advantage of current technologies, by eliminating defects which generate potential failures, as of the first prototypes.
A well-conducted accelerated test process should, in a relatively short time, lead to a significant increase in the robustness of a product, as early as the initial prototypes stage at the beginning of the development phase, thus accelerating early maturity of this product.
Furthermore, identification of the margins available on a "mature" product helps design and size its future environmental stress screening profile more accurately, by increasing the severity of the loadings applied to just what is needed, leading to a particularly significant boost in the efficiency of this environmental stress screening process.
The object of this PAS is to specify the targets assigned to the highly accelerated tests, their basic principle, their scope of application and their implementation procedures.
This guide is thus a methodological document aimed at facilitating drafting of the specification and then performance of highly accelerated tests by the programme managers.
It is ...