Field Data Analysis for Repairable Systems: Status and Industry Trends

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to present simple graphical methods for analyzing the reliability of repairable systems. Many talks and papers on repairable systems analysis deal primarily with complex parametric modeling methods. Because of their highly esoteric nature, such approaches rarely gain wide acceptance into the reliability monitoring practices of a company. This chapter will present techniques based on non-parametric methods that have been successfully used within Sun Microsystems to transform the way reliability of repairable systems is analyzed and communicated to management and customers. Readers of the chapter will gain the ability analyze a large dataset of repairable systems, identify trends in the rates of failures, identify outliers, causes of failures, and present this information using a series of simple plots that can be understood by management, customers and field support engineers alike.