Towards the end of the ECSEL Project "iRel40": three years of Intelligent Reliability

Building on many discoveries and inventions, electronics started affecting people's everyday lives in a significant fashion following the invention of the first solid-state transistor in the late 1940s. The miniaturization paved way for the mass electronics production and later the digital revolution, the outcomes of which are visible to all members of the public today. After about a two-decade-long swing around 2000s from hardware towards software regarding what affects lives more, a point has now been reached where electronics is more important to all and its use is more ubiquitous and crucial than ever before. In most if not all end user or industrial applications, the capability and quality of electronics hardware are the key determining factors. The European electronics components and systems (ECS) industry has traditionally had a high base line for electronics innovation. However, the industry is now compelled, partly due to competition and partly due to customer demand, to manufacture even more reliable electronics products than before. Guaranteeing the reliability of electronics hardware entails the entire ECS value chain to undergo a paradigm shift to holistically address reliability as a key issue. The European ECS industry previously adopted overseas outsourcing considerably, however it is now taking steps to reshape itself into a more coherent value chain with the aim of having not only the electronics designs but also the electronics manufacturing made in Europe. The H2020-ECSEL program successfully funds highly competitive projects in the area of electronics components and systems. We present here the almost final results of a similarly funded project entitled Intelligent Reliability 4.0 ("iRel40"), by providing a background to the topic of ECS, project objectives, the methodologies we have followed, and the results we have obtained during the first 36 months of this ongoing project.