Here’s a simple illustration of how MTBF oversimplifies data, concealing essential information.

By convention, we tend to use MTBF for repairable data. That is fine.

You may also be aware of my dislike for the use of MTBF, for many different reasons. If you find yourself suggesting your organization, customer, industry or whomever to stop using MTBF, you may want to use this simple example to illustrate the ‘value’ of MTBF. [Read more…]

I was preparing to write this article and wondered how many search hits would appear for MTBF? So, opened Google and did an MTBF search. It is a common if misunderstood, acronym.

Beyond the 5,200,000 Google search results, it was the first page results that got me thinking. Keep in mind that Google often serves up a combination of what it thinks you are seeking and which sites have been useful for others.

Let’s break down what you find when you do an MTBF search. [Read more…]

MTBF comes up a bit too often. When it does I have found rolling my eyes and arguing against using MTBF is not very effective.

So, what should a knowing reliability professional do instead?

Let’s explore four questions that you can ask that may help others find the value in no longer talking about MTBF. [Read more…]

Received a short question last week. The person writing seems to already know the answer, yet asked:

If we replace an item after a duration equal to the MTTF value, we would avoid failures, right?

Well, no, most likely not, was my response. What is your response? How would you answer this question? [Read more…]