Fundamental Principles, Processes, and Roles of Environmental Qualification Test Strategy for Complex Engineered Systems

Abstract

“In real life, strategy is actually very straightforward. You pick a general direction and implement it like hell.” Jack Welch Former CEO of General Electric. A qualification strategy, created and executed on complex systems, enables effective and efficient environmental testing at the component, unit, section and system levels. Cost, schedule, and technical challenges highlight the need for an environmental qualification test strategy that provides a robust test regime to verify the design meets user requirements, balanced with a timesaving approach. This paper explains three fundamentals to follow when creating an environmental qualification test strategy that cover risk reduction testing, test planning, and test design. Based on lessons learned through two decades of results, the strategies described in the fundamentals provide an optimized approach to qualification by; 1) demonstrating test environment capabilities as risk reduction, 2) defining key stakeholders, roles and responsibilities along with methods to reduce the possibility of increased test durations due to setup inefficiencies, and 3) providing methods to ensure the required test coverage and test methodology is robust enough to detect design deficiencies. This strategy aligns with customer desire to reduce test delays while at the same time not sacrificing test thoroughness.