MCM Design / PCB Design / System Design

BQR Reliability Engineering Ltd.

CARE®PCB (Computer Aided Reliability Engineering)
CARE®System (Computer Aided Reliability Engineering)
CAME®System (Computer Aided Maintenance Engineering) CAfdE® (Computer Aided field data Engineering)

Stress Calculator, SPICE, Stress Derating, Reliability, Availability, MTBF, Maintainability, Maintenance Concepts, Testability, Fault-Tree, FMEA/FMECA, Spares Optimization, Life Cycle Cost and Logistics Analysis.

Product Description
The CARE/CAME/CAfdE (CCC) is full set of RAMS and ILS software tools. The CARE simulates failures and their probabilities & effects on the PCB/system's behavior while CAME optimizes the maintenance concept. CAfdE analyzes field failures data. CCC Modules are tools for High Availability Design and for Maintenance Cost Reduction by Planning, Analyzing and Optimization. The data is stored in a core-database to be used concurrently.

CARE-PCB:
CARE-PCB is used by the designer to analyze single PCBs and includes the same features as the CARE-System used by the Reliability Analyst to analyze a group of PCBs which form a system (the same goes for the CAME and CafdE System). BQR provides also components library services and conversions of parts from Mentor's Reliability-Manager database to CARE. CARE-PCB includes:

CARE-Stress-Calc The CARE-Stress-Calculator is based on SPICE and saves manual work and estimations by automatically calculating component operating stresses such as: Power, Volt & Current for large digital and analog circuits. It has a DC, AC and Advanced-AC analysis. It has built-in models for each type of component and is accompanied with a large library of components with attributes. Uses the PCB Netlist directly from CAD tools.
CARE-Stress-Derating Compares operating stresses with the allowed de-rated stress. Recommends replacement of over & under-stressed components. Standard, Military, NAVSEA, Industrial and customized De-rating curves.
CARE-MTBF-Prediction Predicts the Failure Rate for each component and the MTBF of the PCB. Predictions for components can be done using the following standards: MIL-HDBK-217, CNET, Bellcore, British-Telecom, Siemens, SN-29500, IEC-50 and GJB299. Operating and Non/Operating profiles can be applied.

CARE-System:
The CARE-System contains a Product Tree Editor and an Algorithm to allocate failure rates top-down. It displays the failure rates for quick determination of the most unreliable component or PCB. The user can import Parts Lists from the CAD/CAE tool to automate the analysis. The CARE-System includes a variety of modules to simulate, predict and analyze reliability and availability as follows:

CARE-RBD: Basic, Network & Markov Includes Basic models (Serial, Parallel, K out of N & Stand By with or without repair) and advanced models (Network and Markov). Can model complex redundant (backup) systems and calculates: Reliability, Availability, Down Time, MTBF, MTTR, Density and Failure Rate Curves versus Time.

Maintenance policy: Replacement, Disassembly, Hot, Cold and No Repair. Distribution types: Exponential, Lognormal, Weibull, Uniform, Pareto, Rayleigh & Bath-tube. Can be used for allocation of reliability parameters top-down to optimize redundancy and System's architecture.
CARE-FTA
Fault & Event Trees. Calculates probability and rates for all events. Can be built automatically from CARE-FMECA or CARE-RBD. Includes: Common Causes, Dormant Events, Cut Sets and Gates (K out of N, OR, OR-Markov, AND, AND-Stand by, AND-Network, priority AND, NOT and XOR).
CARE-FMEA/FMECA
Bottom-to-top Analysis. Complies with M1629 and SAE standards and handles HW/SW functional trees. New effect type: Next Brother Effect. Propagates failure modes automatically to next-Higher effects via all functional blocks. Helps to trace top-down failure causes for diagnostic procedures.
CARE-TA (Testability)
Calculates detection and isolation capabilities of the Built-In tests and ATE. Provides non-detected and non-isolated failure modes in Pareto format. Helps to optimize the system's self diagnostic and ATE capabilities.
CARE-MTTR (Mean Time to Repair)
Calculates the average (by failure rates of sub blocks) maintenance time (replacement and/or repair time depending on sub block repair type). MCTmax for each block presents the maximal confident repair time for specified confidence, considering lognormal repair time density. Allocates top-down MTTR requirements. Defines different failure modes with various tasks for each assembly.

CAME-System:
CAME is an integrated tool, which helps to reduce maintenance costs of any system. CAME simplifies the process of logistic optimizations for multi-sites, multi-systems and multi scenarios. CAME includes the following modules:

LCC (Life Cycle Cost)
Calculates operational availability, cost drivers and total cost for each life cycle phase for multiple scenarios. Compares results of various scenarios. Helps to select the optimal scenario.
ORLA (Optimal Repair level Analysis)
Recommends which PCB should be repaired and where, which PCBs should be discarded and at which location should the spare stocks be located. Recommends the optimal maintenance level for each restored block. Recommends exchange or forward spare stock locations.
S2A (Sparing to Availability)
Calculates the quantity of spares for each part number in each stock, providing system availability with minimal cost.
R2A (Resources to Availability)
Calculates the optimal number of each resources unit participating in replacement or repair of all blocks such as: personnel, support equipments, tools, materials and facilities.

CafdE:
Post FRACAS module (Weibull). Provides a simple tool for analyzing field or test failure data. Calculates field: failure time distribution, MTBF and reliability growth. Can be used also to analyze demonstration tests such as: fixed or sequential tests. Recognize distribution types such as: Exponential, Lognormal, Weibull, Uniform, Pareto and Rayleigh for each part or assembly. Puts the results into the core database and can be used by CARE and CAME.

Product's End User Benefits and Interface to MGC

Quick and easy method of Stress Calculation, Stress Derating, Failure Rates and MTBF Prediction under the Mentor CAD/CAE tool
Provides Power dissipation for each IC to automate the Thermal analysis
User can predict MTBF before placement and place components with high failure rates in a cooler area. After Placement and Thermal analysis, the user can more accurately predict the MTBF.
Built-in Library of 10,000 components. The user can add new components to the library. BQR provides also components library services and conversions of parts from Mentor's Reliability-Manager database to CARE
Reliability analysis performed by Design Engineers at PCB level are linked to the system level analysis made by the Reliability Engineer
The Reliability Engineer can define project goals and control the design
A complete suite of software modules that serves Reliability Analysts and Designers of Electronic Circuits concurrently.

Company Background
BQR Reliability Engineering Ltd. is a privately held corporation established in 1989. BQR has provided RAMS & ILS consulting services and has been involved in thousands of projects for over 120 clients worldwide in the High-Tech industry and defense contractors in Israel working according to MIL-STD, DOD, commercial, Telecom, industrial and ISO standards. In recent years it has become more apparent that complex R&M analyses have to be automated in order to enable the production of more reliable products in time to meet market demands. BQR has developed the CARE®/CAME®/CAfdE® software to automate these procedures. The development of this specialized software for Reliability Engineering has grown to become the company's main activity besides the consultation work, which continues by using and testing the software with real projects, to prove the effectiveness and real world need for the products.

Description of Integration
At the beginning of the design cycle the system's MTBF goal is defined and is allocated down to each PCB in the design hierarchy using CARE-RBD. In the design process, each designer can use CARE-PCB until reducing the stress level and reaching the PCB's MTBF goal. When completed, the parts list is transmitted to the Reliability Analyst for making the system's analysis and other supportability analyses.

BQR

Platforms Supported

AIX	no
HP-UX	no
Solaris	no
Windows XP	yes

Distribution and Contact Information
BQR Reliability Engineering Ltd.
5 Mazal Eliezer St.
P.O. Box 208 Rishon-LeZion 75101, ISRAEL
Tel: (972 3) 9625911
Fax: (972 3) 9625572
E-mail: info@bqr.com
Web: http://www.bqr.com

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