Discussion Group Summary Report Qualification Elimination

This discussion group was directed toward the possibility of eliminating the traditional product qualification. The basic objective of this discussion group was to explore the issues or preconceptions that were limiting us to the traditional qualification approach. The mechanics of the two discussion group sessions were fairly straightforward. I had prepared several overhead transparencies that were meant to provide a basis for exploring our existing qualification and reliability risk management process. I started my presentation with an overview of the origins of our current methodology. As questions arose or as comments or clarifications were offered by session attendees, we stopped the formal presentation and explored the issue or question further. If no further discussion ensued, I returned to my prepared slides. We proceeded in this way until our time ran out. The level of participation by session attendees was very high in both sessions. The backgrounds and interests of the attendees in the two sessions were quite different. As a result, the issues discussed, and the discussion points that were emphasized in the two sessions were generally different. In the following paragraphs I will attempt to capture the key points from both sessions. A predominant theme from both sessions was that the customer-supplier relationship would determine the likelihood of shifting from the traditional qualification methodology to any alternative procedure. It was suggested that vertically integrated companies may have an advantage since they operate on both sides of the customersupplier relationship. Representatives from a few vertically integrated companies seemed to support this belief. In the absence of an internal customer-supplier relationship, several people mentioned that they were cultivating very close partnerships with their key customers. They commented that there was a lack of trust between suppliers and customers. Specific instances where suppliers selectively shared qualification results with customers were offered by customer and supplier representatives in the session. The suppliers claimed that in some situations the sophistication of the customer might dictate the level of openness that a supplier would offer to a customer. In their assessment, the more sophisticated the customer was, the more the details (in this case the details are possible qualification failures or concerns about new failure modes) of the reliability assessment could be shared. Unsophisticated customers were generally thought to be incapable of dealing with the details, and tended to be more dogmatic in their qualification requirements. Although the reasons for this mistrust were varied, there was general agreement that without a higher degree of trust, primarily on the part of customers, any attempt to unilaterally change the rules of the “Qualification Game” would fail. A key discussion topic was how to implement anything other than the historical qualification. The consensus of both sessions was that building in reliability (BIR) was a possible alternative to the current methodology. While we did not spend much time trying to define BIR, the discussion did explore some of the barriers to implementation of