About ILPM Established COTS Parts
The Industry Leading Parts Manufacturers (ILPM) listing for Established COTS EEE Parts is
being developed by the NASA Electronic Parts and Packaging (NEPP) Program following guidance
established by the NASA Engineering & Safety Center (NESC) in the following reference:
"Recommendations on the Use of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS)
Electrical, Electronic, and Electromechanical (EEE)
Parts for NASA Missions - Phase II"
being developed by the NASA Electronic Parts and Packaging (NEPP) Program following guidance
established by the NASA Engineering & Safety Center (NESC) in the following reference:
"Recommendations on the Use of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS)
Electrical, Electronic, and Electromechanical (EEE)
Parts for NASA Missions - Phase II"
An ILPM, is a COTS manufacturer that produces high quality and reliability parts that do not benefit from additional MIL-SPEC screening and lot acceptance testing, common in current NASA and MIL requirements for using nonstandard parts in space. Such additional MIL-SPEC screening may
be more detrimental than beneficial when applied to COTS parts when the test parameters exceed the limits listed in the parts' datasheets.
An Established COTS Part is a part that:
- is produced using processes that have been stable for at least one year so there are enough data to verify the part's reliability;
- is produced in high volume. High volume is defined as a series of parts sharing the same datasheet having a combined sales volume over one million parts during the part's lifetime;
- is 100% electrically tested per datasheet specifications at typical operating conditions in production prior to shipping to customers. Additionally, the manufacturer must have completed multi-lot characterization over theentire set of operating conditions cited in the part's datasheet, prior to mass production release. Thus, production test limits are set for typical test conditions sufficient to guarantee that the parts will meet all parameters' performance specifications on the datasheet;
- is produced on fully automated production lines utilizing statistical process control (SPC), and undergoes in-process testing, including wafer probing for microcircuits and semiconductors, and other means appropriate for other products (e.g., passive parts). These controls and tests are intended to maintain process tolerances and eliminate defective parts at various stages of production; and
- has demonstrated consistent yield trend appropriate for high volume commercial technologies at that technology node.
Note: The terms ILPMs and Established COTS parts are not intended to be used for certification by NASA.