Automating Analysis of Anomalous Products
SigmaQuest’s Automated Maverick Analysis Software

Power-One Inc. products power high-availability infrastructure applications ranging from alternate energy, routers, data storage and servers, wireless communications, optical networking, and medical diagnostics to railway controls and semiconductor test equipment. As a global power systems manufacturer, Power-One, headquartered in Camarillo, California, has operations in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. To more easily identify marginally performing products, in real time, across its entire lineup of products, the company sought to automate analysis of anomalous or “maverick” products.

As Chris Rodriguez, head of worldwide test engineering at Power-One, explains, “We knew maverick analysis was key to ensuring high-quality products, but it was difficult to implement and even harder to incorporate into the manufacturing process. Manual maverick analysis on a large telecom system, for example, could take us weeks while we waited for all the data to be aggregated and analyzed. That’s just not feasible given our tight deadlines. We would perform statistical process control, then maverick analysis, and finally a root cause analysis to try and figure out why something failed to pass or barely passed.”

The answer, Power-One realized, was an automated maverick analysis, but no such solution existed. That’s when Power-One turned to SigmaQuest Inc. for help.

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