Reliability

Reliability is the probability that a part, assembly, or system will perform its intended function in a stated condition or environment for a predetermined length of time without failure.

Reliability techniques are mathematical and statistical tools used to optimize the availability of equipment. Studies show that equipment downtime is responsible for 70% of the potential production capacity. These tools allow you to recover this lost production.

Growth Analysis is used to determine if a system has increasing, decreasing, or constant failure rate. It is used to determine if preventive maintenance is effective.

Fault Tree Analysis is a top-down approach for determining the root-cause of why a particular failure occurred.

These are two common measures used in reliability:

• MTBF is a measure used to track the average time between failures, where a failure is an inability of the equipment to satisfy performance or meet design specifications and has the expectation of successful performance without adjustment or rework.
• MTTR is a measure of the average time to repair a failure.