Counting the cost of ESD.........

Companies are often unaware of the cost of ESD damage in their business. Without this information managers may find it difficult to justify investment in ESD measures, and may not believe that ESD is a serious issue.

Namaguchi & Uchida (EOS/ESD Symposium 1998 245-251) found that 60-90% of defective devices were damaged by EOS or ESD, and 70% of these failures were attributed to damage by ungrounded people.

Better still - count the return on investment!

If the cost of ESD failures is estimated, then the return on investment in ESD measures may also be found.

In the available published information, ROI values of 10:1 are not unusual, and returns of 1000:1 are occasionally reported!

So what are the costs of ESD?

The most expensive failure is undoubtedly one which occurs in equipment in the field. Costs incurred include;

• customer support

• servicing facility, engineers time

• replacement equipment

• loss of reputation

• possible loss of future sales

In-house costs of ESD failures increase the further through the production process the failure is detected. Costs may include;

• rework facility, test facility, engineers time

• replacement parts

• loss of production output, additional capacity required to compensate

• delays fulfilling orders, customer dissatisfaction

Tracking failures can help count the cost of ESD damage

While in-depth analysis of failures may be prohibitively expensive for many companies, simple failure data may be already available. With some identification and analysis of which components are failing, simple estimates of ESD failures may be possible, supported by evidence from the ESD literature.

With estimates of the cost of ESD failures, a justification can be made for the required level of investment in ESD prevention. Tracking ESD failures on an ongoing basis helps to monitor whether the ESD measures remain effective, and warn of problems as they happen.

Optimise your ESD investment

With tracking of failures and estimates of the cost of ESD, analysis of optimum ESD investment becomes possible.