Integrated Chinese Parts Stress Standard Creates Comparison Basis for Different Product Designs

Release Date: January 23, 2002

Greensburg, PA --- Relex Software Corporation, the worldwide leader in reliability analysis software, recently added the Relex 299B Parts Stress standard to its Reliability Prediction module. Based on the parts stress analysis in Chinese standard GJB/z 299B, the Relex 299B Parts Stress standard establishes and maintains consistent methods for estimating the inherent reliability of a mature design for electronic equipment based on part selections and stresses.

"The Chinese market is very excited about the way in which we have fully integrated the parts stress analysis in Chinese standard GJB/z299b into Relex," said Kevin Van Fleet, Vice President of Relex Software Corporation. "They realize how important it is to have a common basis for comparing and evaluating reliability predictions of related or competitive designs, and they thoroughly understand the need to increase the reliability of all equipment being designed."

The Relex 299B Parts Stress standard calculates failure rates for parts and assemblies based on environmental use characteristics, piece part counts, thermal and electrical stresses, subsystem repair rates, and system configuration. According to Van Fleet, the Relex 299B standard is similar to the MIL-HDBK-217 standard so often used for reliability prediction in the United States. In addition to calculating failure rates in similar manners, both standards use flags to indicate overstressed parts, allow the user to perform trade-off analyses, and provide system availability and Mean Time To Failure (MTTF) values.

Because the Relex 299 Parts Stress standard is fully integrated into the Relex Reliability Software Suite, any failure information calculated by it is immediately available for use in other Relex modules. "Relex's common database ensures that Relex RBD, Relex Fault Tree, Relex FMEA, and all other Relex modules and reliability standards can use the MTBF and reliability prediction values generated by Relex 299B Parts Stress," said Van Fleet. "We anticipate that the Chinese market will soon realize how well Relex modules work together and how much they can contribute to an effective reliability analysis program, resulting in increasing sales in China for all modules in the Relex Reliability Software Suite."

About Relex Software Corporation

Relex Software Corporation is a world leader in reliability analysis software. Its products are used by thousands of engineers in a variety of businesses around the globe. In business since 1986, Relex Software Corporation asserts that its mission is to produce a superior line of high-quality software tools for reliability analysis. Long-recognized for their user-friendly, state-of-the-art features, the modular tools in the Relex Reliability Software Suite include an intuitive graphical user interface, support for scientific graphical charts, an enhanced CAD interface, visual system modeling with redundancy support, completely customizable output reports, extensive parts libraries, and a comprehensive online help system. For more information on Relex Software Corporation, call 724.836.8800 or visit www.relex.com.