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Continuous improvement and weight reduction are key contributors to success of most of the Product Engineering Organizations. This helps to keep the product competitive in market from cost, weight and performance stand point. It needs to be ensured to have enough strength in the structures to support the external loads along with quality requirements. This can be ensured by removing material from redundant zones and provide it at necessary areas carrying loads. In current paper, author covers information about utilization of topology optimization tool to achieve the weight reduction and in turn cost reduction to contribute in the organizations Value Improvement efforts. Stabilizer foot optimization is an opportunity explored in construction vehicle (Backhoe). Current stabilizer foot is a common design across multiple models that range in performance and weight capability.

Reliability engineering methods are used to assess risk and eliminate hazards by estimation, elimination, and management of risks of failures. The ISO 26262 functional safety standard gives detailed guidance on reliability engineering methods like Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) [7], Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) [8] [2], and etc. While, there are many methods available for reliability engineering; no single method is foolproof for securing safety by eliminating hazards completely. Out of these methods, FMEA is widely being used as an integral part of the product development life cycle [10]. In this method, failure modes of individual components are analyzed considering one failure at a time. FMEA is an efficient method for analyzing failures in simple systems. For complex systems, FMEA becomes impractical. It is also difficult to consider variables in FMEA.

The automotive electronic systems are composed of two major mechanical elements: an equipment housing or enclosure, and a printed circuit board (PCB) assembly. The PCB is made up of alternating layers of copper and FR-4 glass epoxy laminated together. An estimation of the mechanical reliability of a PCB in an electronic system is considered to be an important part of the overall reliability estimate of the entire system and vibration is often one of the key causes of system and component failures. As different kind of electronic components (like transformers, capacitors, chips etc) are mounted on both sides of the PCB using solder joints, adhesive etc, various complexities are encountered while modeling them for analysis. For avoiding those, simple PCBs without any components are considered for the present study. This paper focuses on the methodology to understand and predict the dynamic behavior of the system using various mechanical tests and simulations.