Most untimely death of Dr. Guangbin Yang, FASQ I have known Dr. Guangbin Yang since January 2003, when the IEEE Reliability Society honored him with our Engineer of the Year Award at our AdCom Awards Banquet. A few years later, Dr. Yang became an ASQ Fellow. Dr. Yang has developed numerous methodologies and tools for reliability test, design, and degradation analysis, which have been deployed in industry and which benefited greatly from improved reliability, reduced design cost, and shortened the design cycle. Dr. Yang and I exchanged emails and had face-to-face discussion off and on since that time, including near term visits at various RAMS Symposiums, most recently at the January 2013 RAMS®. Guangbin has been working in the field of reliability engineering for at least 30 years. He has developed numerous methodologies for reliability design, testing, and degradation analysis. He has published over 40 papers derived from his research work in various journals (e.g., IEEE RS Transactions on Reliability) and conferences (e.g., RAMS®). He has also published a book; Life Cycle Reliability Engineering (Wiley, 2007, 530 pages). He also established and chaired the Automotive Systems Technical Committee as part of the RS Technical Activities organization and served as an Associate Editor for the RS Transactions on Reliability. He was also active in the ASQ Reliability Division and was the ASQ Publications Chair. From 2003 to 2007, Dr. Yang (a Ford Supervisor) served as the Chair (its first Chairman) of our Technical Operations’ Automotive Systems Committee. As Chair, he had responsibilities for leading his Committee to review technical standards and papers, to organize conference sessions, to recommend new technologies and best practices to manufacturers of automotive systems, to collaborate with academic organizations and the automotive industry in developing cutting edge methodologies and techniques, to track technical development in the field, and to write annual reports covering technology development for distribution to the Society AdCom members. Dr. Thad Regulinski, FIEEE and former Sr. Associate Editor of T-Rel, reviewed a number of papers submitted for publication by Dr. Yang whose research underpinning his published papers Dr. Regulinski considers a lasting legacy to the Reliability profession. Thad lost a loyal and valued friend, so he has written an OBIT article for publication in T-Rel. Tom Fagan (FIEEE plus a past RS President) was also a very dear friend of Guangbin and also supported and guided him in his numerous IEEE and RS efforts. Professor Shiuhpyng Winston Shieh, our RS Newsletter Editor-in-Chief, advertised this article within the June 2013 RS Newsletter -- The 2nd article, "Failure of Successful Reliability Demonstration Tests", is written by Dr. Guangbin Yang. Dr. Yang points out the pitfalls when correlating the field application to the reliability demonstration test that may lead to unexpected product failure. The author also listed the actions for correcting reliability demonstration tests when it fails to detect an inadequate design or process. Our reliability profession has lost an esteemed colleague, who was generous in sharing technical information and approaches. In fond memory, |
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