Quality forecasting engine

An automated method of predicting the number of defects that will occur during the manufacturing of a new electronic assembly design on a specific assembly line, comprising:

• identifying and counting the components that are manufactured on said assembly line during a time period;
• counting the number of defects that are associated with each of said identified components;
• storing the counted defects in a first historical database;
• calculating the defect rate for each of said identified components and storing said defect rate in the first historical database;
• enumerating a bill of material for every component in said new electronic assembly design;
• extracting information associated with a component from a library database into a quality forecasting engine, said information comprising part number, part description and part geometry;
• the quality forecasting engine importing the enumerated bill of material and the stored defect rate from the first historical database;
• inputting into the quality forecasting engine factors for components that are not resident in the first historical database or in the library database;
• and
• the quality forecasting engine performing a comparison of the imported enumerated bill of material information to the extracted information and to the imported stored defect rate, and calculating a predicted number of defects for every component in the bill of material of said new electronic assembly.