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The paper describes the application of surface mounted technology to cost reduce and downsize an existing electronic control module. Ford Motor Company's Lamp Outage Module was chosen to demonstrate the advantages of this technology. The application of this new manufacturing technology to an automotive product required careful printed circuit board design and component selection. The design considerations, test plan and reliability results are presented. The test results indicate that with proper component selection performance can be obtained that surpasses the existing manufacturing process. This technology does promise vehicle cost reductions as it is applied to other automotive products.

Obstacle detection technology has made significant progress in the last five years in the important product areas of quality, performance and affordability. Ford Motor Company's market research indicates that our customers are very interested in new safety features. Drivers consider obstacle detection and collision warning technology as the next breakthrough in safety technology. Ford recognizes the importance of moving from the collision mitigation to the collision avoidance paradigm. Fortunately, the first step in collision avoidance can be taken by equipping the vehicle with reliable and affordable obstacle detection sensors