Serves as an application guide to a reliability stress screening process for electronic hardware. The concept, purpose and justification of the screening process are explained. The standard is intended as a guide to be used with one of the IEC reliability stress screening standards. It gives guidance in cases where it is essential that early failures be removed from the items manufactured in order to deliver them to the customer when the problems causing the early failures are solved. It gives guidance on where the reliability stress screening should be carried out, i.e. component, subsystem or system level.