Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Reliability is an attribute of an item. The item, with its design, assembly, and use, has a finite probability of working over some duration.
We deliberately attempt to create items that meet our and our customer’s expectations concerning that probability and duration. We maintain and operate our equipment with an expectation of successful performance.
We and our customers are let down when a failure occurs. We do not enjoy the benefits of the item’s value. [Read more…]
In a common definition used by engineers reliability is a probability of success. It is the chance of an item operating as expected over some duration in a given environment. In this case, we have probability as part of the definition of reliability.
Reliability in common use definition includes trustworthiness, dependability and similar definitions. It’s more than how many times your friends help you move to a new apartment, it’s a feeling or sense we have concerning our ability to count on our friends for the help.
Jim McLeish – Mid-West Regional Manager – DfR Solutions
(Rochester Hills Michigan)
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmcleish
Expanded from the RIAC Reliability Information Analysis Center Linkedin Group Discussion on
“Great challenge for change from Fred – No MTBF!”
“Endless discussion and it seems there’s no real solution to get rid of MTBF”
See original and ongoing Linkedin discussion here.
I am absolutely astonished that the reliability profession and its noted experts are unable to develop a better metric to characterize reliability performance and specify reliability requirements. I respectfully submit that there is a simple and eloquent solution that has successfully been used in the ball bearing and machine industry for decades (that actually predates MTBF/MTTF), that should be considered as a replacement to MTBF/MTTF. [Read more…]
This post is a conversation first held on the LinkedIn group No MTBF. I’m capturing a portion of the contributions here to continue the discussion or to widen the audience. Reminds me of always assuming 95% confidence is the right value when designing a test, or assuming constant failure rate. So, let the conversation continue, starting with the original post. [Read more…]