Improving Resilience with Accelerated

Testing
By APICS partners | March/April 2013 | 23 | 2
A power-supply manufacturer gets a boost
CHALLENGE: Ensure that products remain reliable in harsh environments
SOLUTION: Accelerated testing systems by Qualmark
COMPANY: Ensign Power Systems
FACILITIES: Loveland, Colorado
OPERATION: Manufacturer of power supplies

The challenge
Ensign Power Systems specializes in the design, testing, analysis, and manufacturing of custom power supplies. Its
products include high- and low-voltage uninterruptible power supplies, alternating-to-direct-current and direct-to-
direct-current converters, and power systems that serve military, medical, and industrial applications.

Ensigns customers rely on products that must function continuously even in the most demanding environments
from battlefields to steel mills. One steel mill was experiencing a major problem: repeated power failures. In this
rugged, industrial environment, a failure can result in a complete mill shutdown and the loss of a day or more of
output. Ensign needed to ensure its power supplies were the best, most-reliable tools for this and all its customers.

The solution
To increase product liability, Ensign sought the services of Qualmark, a manufacturer of accelerated-stress-testing
systems. In stress testing, failures are induced in products from exposing them to extreme conditions during initial
design. By subjecting products and components to harsh environments that exceed design criteria, weak links can be
discovered prior to market release. Accelerated testing produces results within hours or days, reducing product
development cycles and time to market.

With any latent warranty issues discovered early, a much more durable and robust product can be produced. Benefits
include efficiency gains in product testing and improvements in reliability, enabling Ensign to not only lessen
development costs and warranty claims, but also quickly grow corporate brand loyalty through improved reliability.

One advantage of Qualmark testing is that it is optimized around rapid temperature changes. Engineers realized
long ago that they need to cycle the temperature from hot to cold to uncover subtle defects, but now we know that
the faster you can change the temperature, the more effective the screening, says Larry Choate, vice president of
Ensign. In fact, if you change the temperature quickly enough, you dont need to do as many cycles, so its a more
efficient and faster process.

Choate says that adding vibration in addition to temperature variation makes a system even more effective at finding
defects, and Qualmarks products are designed with this functionality in mind. This conserves resources, but time
and manpower are still required. However, to Choate, accelerated stress testing is essential. We tell our customers,
You really need to do this because it does make a difference, he says, adding, If youre not doing accelerated
testing, you might as well not be performing any screening at all.

The results
With Qualcomm systems, instead of taking two days to test a product, Ensign uses accelerated testing to
accomplish the task in less than five hoursa greater than 200 percent improvement in efficiency, Choate says.

Additionally, Ensign delivered a 300-volt power supply to the steel mill that featured short-circuit protection and
tight performance in rugged environments. Where three different power supplies formerly were needed, Ensign
consolidated into just one. The customer received a solution that was affordable and durable. The biggest expense
you can incur is to have your product fail in the field, Choate says. It not only bloats your warranty costs, but also
yields unhappy customers.

Choate says Ensign is experiencing efficiency gains, decreases in required resources, and real reliability. In a
critical marketplace, we want to make sure we ship the most reliable product we know how, and the Qualmark
system is the best tool we have found for doing just that."