Accelerated life test and degradation analysis: a time saving reliability analysis for a domestic washing machine

The increasing competition of global markets requires companies to focus their attentions on two main aspects of the internal production system: cost reduction and product quality. Quality is identified with customer satisfaction. This can be converted to the contentment of the customer in terms of attended performance during the entire life cycle of the product. In particular, reliability performances needs to be investigated and tested during the design of the new product. The aim of this study is to evaluate the reliability performance of a model of washing machine for domestic use. The application of accelerated life tests and degradation analysis was necessary to identify the main failure modes and the deterioration mechanism in a shorter time. This paper presents a systematic approach to evaluate reliability performances and degradation trend of the new machine designed accordingly with the reduced testing time policy.