A few years ago, along with colleagues from Intel and Dell, we shared with you the importance of Failure Analysis as a business proposition[1], This paper will identify even more business processes which will benefit from a robust System Level Failure Analysis framework. More and more companies strive to differentiate themselves from their competition by focusing not just on product features and price, but also on how well they serve their customers. An effective Service Plan (Figure 1) is fundamental in the provision of this service. No matter how broad a company’s service offering portfolio, a fundamental enabler of any Fault Management system is the ability to identify and predict failures. Further, a robust Knowledge Management system must exist to enable the collection and dissemination of services intellectual property (IP) in an effective manner, and facilitate a broad level commonality analysis that provides the ability to monitor trends and shifts in product performance.

This paper describes the Failure Analysis (FA) challenges that exist in today’s Personal Computer (PC) environment. The development and advancement in analytical tools and techniques have advanced the understanding and identification of failures, however economic and cost pressures have brought about a significant shift in the evaluation of Failure Analysis as a value add proposition as measured by the bottom line. This paper examines the factors and conditions that must be considered when assessing the FA scope and role, and its establishment as a critical value add requirement to maintain quality leadership and product performance expectations. The need for “Timely Actionable Information” becomes essential as part of the FA approach and a necessity to remain effective and competitive. This paper defines an approach by which this can be accomplished in the dynamic and high speed PC environment where product life cycles are consistently shrinking and the need for analytical techniques that yield “high confidence” answers quickly are becoming necessary. The changing conditions of the PC environment are driving the PC Failure Analysis groups to respond and adapt by establishing an Integrated Failure Analysis framework. This framework may span multiple organizations or companies and must deliver proactive information in a timely manner throughout the product life cycle (PLC). The information is proactive in the sense that FA is now identifying issues and prioritizing which of those to analyze, versus the historical model of waiting for a request by another organization.