Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
We use our biases every day to make choices.
We select the beige sweater because we have a color bias concerning our sweaters.
Many of our biases help us quickly make decisions. We rely on biases to move through the day. Many of our biases are under the surface, unconsciously guiding our daily decisions. Mostly, biases are good or at least inconsequential.
The problem is the bias that shields us from achieving our goals. [Read more…]
Mojan and Fred discuss a range of topics in a rapid-fire fashion.
ᐅ Play Episode
If you have been a reliability engineer for a week or more, or worked with a reliability engineer for a day or more, someone has asked about testing planning. The conversation may have started with “How many samples and how long will the test take?”
You have heard the sample size question.
Did you notice the speed limit signs in your neighborhood today?
If like me, you went about your commute or regular travels relatively blind. You watched for the neighbor’s dog that jumped into the road last week, yet didn’t register seeing the speed limit sign.
It’s a cognitive burden to notice the mundane or known. [Read more…]
This may seem an odd article for the NoMTBF site. Stay with me for a moment longer.
Over the years of speaking out on the perils of MTBF, there has been some pushback. A few defend using MTBF. Here are three of the most common (maybe not exactly the best, per se) reasons to use MTBF. [Read more…]
I got this question the other day. The person knew about the NoMTBF campaign. They didn’t quite understand why it was a big deal, especially for me, to avoid MTBF.
The tiff between MTBF and myself is not personal. The metric has not been a part of my work or caused any significant problems for me personally.
It has caused problems that have caused problems for my enjoyment of products and systems though. It has lead to poor decisions by many organizations that create items I and you use on a regular basis.
We can do better than to settle with the use of MTBF in our own work or in the work of those around us. Here are 10 reasons I recommend you avoid using MTBF.
Meantime between failures MTF is a widely used reliability metric in various Industries, particularly in electronics and manufacturing. While it can be a valuable tool in certain scenarios, its misuse or misinterpretation can lead to costly mistakes. Let’s explore when MTBF is applicable and when it might be inappropriate to use.
By understanding when to use MTB and when to seek alternative methods, organizations can make more informed decisions about product design, maintenance strategies, and reliability improvements, ultimately leading to better products and more satisfied customers.
[Read more…]
MTBF is a magic method for predicting time to failure for your new design. On this page we present to you the fastest way to achieving MTBF.
Maybe The Best Function ever! [Read more…]
A conversation the other day involved how or why someone would use the mean of a set of data described by a Weibull distribution.
The Weibull distribution is great at describing a dataset that has a decreasing or increasing hazard rate over time. Using the distribution we also do not need to determine the MTBF (which is not all that useful, of course).
Walking up the stairs today, I wondered if the arithmetic mean of the time to failure data, commonly used to estimate MTBF, is the same as the mean of the Weibull distribution. Doesn’t everyone think about such things?
Doesn’t everyone think about such things? So, I thought, I’d check. Set up some data with an increasing failure rate, and calculate the arithmetic mean and the Weibull distribution mean. [Read more…]
A habit you should examine and stop.
At first, I wondered if MTBF use was addictive, yet I thought that comparison would belittle the very serious issues of those with addictive behaviors. Using MTBF does not generally cause a person harm, while poor decision based on it might harm the organization.
I find those that regularly employ MTBF do so without thinking about it too much. If someone mentions reliability, they think MTBF. Automatically.
Habits help us reduce cognitive load and make our life simpler. For example, do you need to focus on how to put on your shoes every morning? I’m personally happy my habit skills allow me to remember how to drive safely without the intense focus required the first time I got behind the wheel.
Let’s examine how to tell if someone has the Habit of MTBF use and what you can do about it. [Read more…]
MTBF is not meant to be used for anything other than teaching someone new to reliability how the various functions and tasks work.
Using MTBF in the real world is an oversimplification to the point of being less then useful. Possibly even harmful.
You see MTBF is books, articles, and papers, often with the caveat of the assumption to simplify the math to illustrate the process or concept. Hence, does not apply for actual use. [Read more…]
Do make compromises around gathering and analyzing data since you only need to report MTBF?
Do you use MTBF (exponential distribution) based test planning when you know the product has a non-constant hazard rate?
These questions came up this week via email looking for advice when directed to ignore the actual situation and just do what the customer wants.
I’m traveling this week, rather jet-lagged today, so going to keep this one short.
How would you answer these questions? What advice would you give someone using exponential based reporting, test planning, or data analysis approaches knowing the customer expects that process yet the data and your experience suggest you should use another method (Weibull or MCF, for example)?
Please add you comments below and let’s prepare a list of what one should say or use to respond to such actions.
In this episode, I speak with Philip Sage about the MTBF (again), but with a focus on its indiscriminate use to describe electronic component failures.
Phil shares the history of its use and how it has become the de facto metric.
If you want to learn more about how to assess the Reliability of your Electronic components, then you should reach out to Phil through Linkedin or his website (https://mantua.group/).
Ever heard of the MTBF? A lot of people have. But not many people (truly) understand what it is. For example, is it possible for one product with a larger (better) MTBF to have more warranty failures than another product with a smaller (worse) MTBF? A lot of people think not. But it actually is. And not in just some weird, once in a lifetime sort of way. Lots of products with larger (better) MTBFs fail more often than those with smaller (worse) MTBFs. Confused? This webinar will help!
[Read more…]Ever heard of the MTBF? A lot of people have. But not many people (truly) understand what it is. For example, is it possible for one product with a larger (better) MTBF to have more warranty failures than another product with a smaller (worse) MTBF? A lot of people think not. But it actually is. And not in just some weird, once in a lifetime sort of way. Lots of products with larger (better) MTBFs fail more often than those with smaller (worse) MTBFs. Confused? This webinar will help!
[Read more…]
