Abbott Analytical Products



Hardware and Software Reliability Papers

Unit Testing

Tom Rooker's presentation titled Unit Testing-Approaches, Tools, Traps gives a survey on unit testing. This presentation a practical engineering approach to unit testing. The presentation gives the "what, why, and who" associated with unit testing. The approach is applicable to units destined for either software application and firmware. The information presented is portable to the various programming languages. It is also scalable to meet the demands of complex projects. Finally, the presentation discusses the "non-silver bullet" aspects of unit testing.

Markovian Approach to Software Testing

Tom Rooker's presentation describes the implementation of the Markovian approach to software testing. This approach yields a guaranteed level of software performance in the field. The assocaited technical paper provides the complete definition of the approach, a process template, formuli, etc.

Warranty Planning under Monte Carlo Simulation

Tom Rooker's paper on Warranty Program Planning puts forth an algorithm employing Monte Carlo simulation of expected field performance. This model is further enhanced with the introduction of economic costs associated with normal field actions. Finally matching this model the user can develop decision parameters for determining when the field performance and field cost fall out side of acceptable limits. This algorithm serves as the foundation for Abbott's implementation of AAP071: Warranty Planning.

Test Case Selection

K. C. Tai and Yu Lei, A Test Generation Strategy for Pairwise Testing submitted to IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. 1999.

Coverage Metrics and Testing Efficiency/Performance

A. T. Rivers Ph.D. thesis dealing with software testing.

Production Risk Management

Managing Risk Improves Production December 1999 featuring fault tree analysis Control Engineering OnLine.

Fault Tree Analysis in Safety Studies

Reliable Software Technologies discussion of software safety employing fault tree analysis.

Fault Tree Analysis

Center for System Reliability,Sandia National Laboratories discussion concerning fault tree analysis .

Fault Tree Development

Southwestern Books author, Ian S. Sutton, brief discussion featuring fault tree development .

Graphical System Analysis

Lorna Love and Chris Johnson present an excellent paper dealing with diagrams to support the analysis of system failure and operator error.

Modeling Software Reliability During Non-Operational Testing

A. Rivers and M.A. Vouk, "An Experimental Evaluation of Hyper-Geometric Code Testing Coverage Model", in Proc. 1995 Software Engineering Research Forum, Boca Raton, FL, pp. 41-50, November 1995.

System Analysis of Medical Devices

Medical Device & Diagnostic Industry presentation written by Henry Ozog gives an excellent review of various analysis approaches used in critical applications.

Basic Reliability Tools Discussion

Wolfson Maintenance Asset Management Services provides a discussion of tools employed in system reliability analysis.

Case Study Employing Fault Tree Analysis

Chris Johnson present a case study using fault tree analysis to visualize the relationship between human error and organizational failure.

Reliability Engineering Links of Interest

FDA Quality Specification 820
FDA Software Terms and Definitions
Guidance for FDA Reviewers and Industry
FDA Guidance Documents
FDA Document Title 21 CFR 11: Electronic Signatures
Medical Device Quality Systems Manual
Center for Device and Radiological Health, CDRH
FDA Guidance on OTS Software
Medical devices-Risk Analysis EN1441
Medical devices-Application of risk management ISO14971
Link to electronic medical records resources
Code of Federal Regualtions
Current technical articles from the Institute of Validation Technology
RTP Software Process Improvement Network
Software engineering body of knowledge
ASQC software
Software Engineering Institute
Unit Test Software Downloads associated with xProgamming
Kent Beck's original papaer on unit testing and xp
Trends in Software On-line Journal
Triangle Information SystemsQuality Assurance
Rosetta stone of specifications
ReliSoft Handbook
Radiation Hardening, SEU, etc.
Exceelent fault tolerant design center
Respository of software links
ASQC respository of links
SPC BOK
UML information resource organization
FMECA Info Center
US Department of Defense Software Process magazine
RAC Toolbox
RAC Journal


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