This chapter surveys both basic quality and basic reliability concepts as an introduction to the failure analysis professional. It begins with a section describing the distinction between quality and reliability and moves on to provide an overview of the concept of experiment design along with an example. The chapter then discusses the purposes of reliability engineering and introduces four basic statistical distribution functions useful in reliability engineering, namely normal, lognormal, exponential, and Weibull. It also provides information on three fundamental acceleration models used by reliability engineers: Arrhenius, Eyring, and power law models. The chapter concludes with information on failure rates and mechanisms and the two techniques for uncovering reliability issues, namely burn-in and outlier screening.

Education and training play an important role if the failure analyst is to be successful in his or her work. This article discusses the history of training activities in the failure/product analysis discipline and describes where this area is heading. It provides information on three areas of education and training that should be given to the analyst for him or her to be successful developing and fielding modern semiconductor components: analysis process, technology, and technique training.

This article is a compilation of terms and definitions related to failure analysis that have been addressed in the proceedings of the International Symposium for Testing and Failure Analysis.