Failure Times Crow-AMSAA Example

This example appears in the Reliability Growth and Repairable System Analysis Reference book.

A prototype of a system was tested at the end of one of its design stages. The test was run for a total of 300 hours and 27 failures were observed. The table below shows the collected data set. The prototype has a design specification of an MTBF equal to 10 hours with a 90% confidence level at 300 hours. Do the following: 1) Estimate the parameters of the Crow-AMSAA model using maximum likelihood estimation. 2) Does the prototype meet the specified goal?

Failure Times Data

Solution

1)	The next figure shows the parameters estimated using RGA.



2)	The instantaneous MTBF with one-sided 90% confidence bounds can be calculated using the Quick Calculation Pad (QCP), as shown next. From the QCP, it is estimated that the lower limit on the MTBF at 300 hours with a 90% confidence level is equal to 10.8170 hours. Therefore, the prototype has met the specified goal.