What You Need to Know About MTBF
podcast episode with speaker Chris Jackson
MTBF stands for ‘mean time between failure.’ This sounds intuitively easy to understand. But … if you haven’t taken the time to understand MTBF, and your organization relies on the reliability of its products, you are almost certainly in trouble.
For example, it is statistically possible for almost all of your equipment or products to have failed by the MTBF. Did you know that? Most equipment and products ‘age.’ That is, they go through stages of infant mortality, useful life, and wear out.
Did you know that just talking about MTBF (and nothing else) means that you are assuming that your equipment or products never age? Did you know that (by definition) it is impossible to understand when you should service your equipment based on the MTBF?
This presentation is a simple introduction that doesn’t use complex words to explain some of the basic concepts of reliability engineering. In particular, how things like MTBF are so easy to misunderstand and how relying on the ‘easy’ metrics does more harm than good.
This Accendo Reliability webinar originally broadcast on 13 August 2019.
How to Talk About MTBF episode
The Evil Ways of MTBF with Fred Schenkelberg episode
Only have MTBFs episode
Vendor MTBF Claim episode
MTBF, Reliability, and the Curve episode
Exploring Alternatives to MTBF
You may already know my position on MTBF. If not, in short, do not use MTBF at all, ever, in any form. So what should we use instead.
What To Do When A Customer Requests MTBF
what specific steps you can take to help your customer actually use your the stated reliability goal and not MTBF.
What You Need to Know About MTBF
No time to understand MTBF, and your organization relies on the reliability of its products, you are almost certainly in trouble.
What to Do About MTBF Use
The proper and improver responses to someone asking about or requesting MTBF information. Some to avoid and some to use regularly.
How Do I Do MTBF Testing?
If you want to learn more about MTBF testing and how it might (or might not) work … then view this recording.
Why You Should Avoid MTBF
This morning’s email included a question on why I was so against using MTBF. This episode is my answer and why one should avoid MTBF
The MTBF and Modeling System Reliability
The Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) appears in lots of textbooks and standards, so it must be really important … right? Well, not really.
Hi Fred,
Can you please point me to the PDF of slides?
Thanks,
Vijay
Hi Vijay,
you can find them here https://lucas-accendo-site-speed.sprod01.rmkr.net/accendo-webinars/accendo-reliability-webinar-series/what-you-need-to-know-about-mtbf/ and you have to be logged into the site to see the download link.
Cheers,
Fred