Chapter 11

QM4900

Reliability

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 Reliability & Maintainability in
Manufacturing

• Reliability and maintainability are key ingredients to

preserving production efficiency. Properly managed,
they lead to lower total life cycle costs, helping
organizations maintain a competitive edge.

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Reliability in Manufacturing
• Reliability is the probability that machinery/equipment can
perform continuously, without failure, for a specified interval of
time when operating under stated conditions. Increased
reliability implies less failure and consequently less downtime
and loss of production.
• Reliability, or quality over the long term, is the ability of a
product to perform its intended function over a period of time
and under prescribed environmental conditions.
• Reliability engineering provides the theoretical and practical
tools used to determine the capability of parts, components,
equipment, subsystems and systems to perform their required
functions without failure for specified periods in specified
environments.
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 Maintainability in Manufacturing

• Maintainability is a characteristic of design,

installation, and operation, usually expressed as the
probability that a machine can be retained in, or
restored to, specified operable condition within a
specified interval of time when maintenance is
performed in accordance with prescribe procedures.

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Causes of Unreliability:
• Improper design
• Improper materials
• Manufacturing errors
• Assembly and inspection errors
• Improper testing
• Improper packaging and shipping
• Improper start-up *
• User abuse *
• Misapplication *

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Reliability Programs

• A well-thought-out reliability program will include the areas of design,

testing, manufacture, raw material and component purchases,
production, packaging, shipping, marketing, field service, and
maintenance.
• A sound reliability program developed and implemented to support a
robust system will consider the following aspects:

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Aspects of Sound Reliability Program in
Manufacturing
1. The entire system
2. The humans in the system
3. Maintenance of the system
4. Simplicity of design
5. Redundant and fail-safe designs
6. Manufacturing methods and purchasing requirements
7. Maintenance of complete product or system performance records
8. Communication

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Product Life Cycle Curve
• The life cycle of a product is commonly broken down into three
phases: early failure, chance failure, and wear-out.

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Reasons for Reliability Programs
• Successful companies are able to control the
reliability of their products.
• Increasing complexity of products requires higher
component reliability.
• Consumers are becoming more reliability
conscious.

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Measures of reliability
• Several different types of tests exist to judge the reliability of a
product, including failure-terminated, time-terminated, and
sequential tests.
The name of each of these tests says a good deal about the type of the
test.
• Failure-terminated tests are ended when a predetermined number
of failures occur within the sample being tested. The decision
concerning whether or not the product is acceptable is based on the
number of products that have failed during the test.
• A time-terminated test is concluded when an established number of
hours is reached. For this test, product is accepted on the basis of
how many products failed before reaching the time limit.
• A sequential test relies on the accumulated results of the tests.

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Failure Rate, Mean Life Calculations
• When system performance is time dependent, such as the length of time a system is
expected to operate, then reliability is measured in terms of mean life, failure rates,
availability, mean time between failures, and specific mission reliability. As a system
is used, data concerning failures become available. This information can be utilized
to estimate the mean life and failure rate of the system. Failure rate, λ, the
probability of a failure during a stated period of time, cycle, or number of impacts,
can be calculated as:

• From this, the average life can be calculated as :

• Or

• The average life 𝝦 is also known as the mean time between failure (MTBF) or the
mean time to failure (MTTF). MTBF, how much time has elapsed between failures, is
used when speaking of repairable systems. MTTF is used for nonrepairable systems.
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 Exercise

• Calculating Failure Rate and Average Life

• Twenty windshield wiper motors are being tested using a time-terminated
test. The test is concluded when a total of 200 hours of continuous
operation have been completed.
• During this test, the number of windshield wipers that fail before reaching
the time limit of 200 hours is counted. If three wipers failed after 125, 152,
and 189 hours, calculate the failure rate λ and the average life 𝝦?

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Solution

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Availability Calculations
• MTBF and MTTF describe reliability as a function of time. Here
the amount of time that the system is actually operating is of
great concern. For example, without their radar screen, air
traffic controllers are sightless and therefore out of operation.
To be considered reliable, the radar must be functional for a
significant amount of the expected operating time. Since many
systems need preventive or corrective maintenance, a system’s
reliability can be judged in terms of the amount of time it is
available for use:

• MTBF values can be used in place of MTTF.

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Exercise

• Windshield wiper motors are readily available and easy to install.

• Calculate the availability of the windshield wipers on a bus driven
eight hours a day, if the mean time between failure or average life 𝝦
is 1250 hours. When the windshield wiper motor must be replaced,
the bus is out of service for a total of 24 hours.

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 Solution

• We can say the bus is available 98% of the time.

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Problem 1
• Suppose that we want to test for the failure of the Heart
Pacemaker:
• 100 Heart pacemakers are tested
• 5000 hours of testing per unit
• 5 pacemakers failed halfway through testing.
• Calculate the following:
1. Percent of failures?
2. Number of failures per unit hour?
3. Number of failures per unit year?
4. If 1100 people receive pacemakers, how many are expected to
fail in the first year?

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Solution to Problem 1
• 1. Failure %= 5/100= 0.05 = 5%
• 2. Failure Rate per Hour = # of Failures/(total time – nonoperating time)
• Total time= 5000hrs x 100 units= 500,000 unit hours
• Nonoperating time = 2500hrs x 5 units = 12,500
• FR per Hour= 5 / (500000-12500) = 0.00001026 failure per hour

• 3. Number of failure per unit year:

• FR per year= FR per hour x 24 x 365 = 0.08985

• 4. Failures on 1100 pacemakers installed during the first year:

• Failures of units per year (among 1100 units installed) is = 1100 units x
0.8985 per unit year = 98.83

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Problem 2

• A manufacturer of infant car seats is interested in testing the

reliability of the plastic clips that serve to attach the seat belts
securely around the child. The engineer in charge of product
testing has devised a mechanism that clips and unclips the
plastic clips while the number of cycles before breakage is
counted. During this cycle-dependent test, which lasted 200
cycles, 4 of the 24 clips have failed, one at each of the following
times: 91 cycles, 103 cycles, 145 cycles, 155 cycles. What is
the failure rate?

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Problem 3

• Samsung ZA produces 3,000 computer chips per day. Three

hundred are tested for a period of 500 operating hours each.
During the test, six failed: two after 50 hours, two at 100 hours,
one at 300 hours, and one at 400 hours. What is the failure
rate? What is the mean life? Assuming exponential trend,
determine the reliability after 18000hours. If 300 of these chips
are used in building a mainframe computer, how many failures
of the computer can be expected per month?

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 Reliability of the System

• Reliability is the probability that a product, service, or part will

perform as intended for a specified period of time under normal
conditions.
• We are all familiar with product reliability in the form of product
warranties.
• No product is 100% certain to function properly.
• Reliability is a probability function dependent on sub-parts or
components.

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Reliability of the Component
—Reliability is the probability that a product will not fail during a
particular time period.
—Like probability reliability takes on numerical values between
0.0 and 1.0.
—A reliability of 0.78 is interpreted as 78 out of 100 parts will
function as expected during a particular time period and 22 will
not.
—If n is the total number of units being tested and s represents
those units performing satisfactorily, then reliability R is:
—R= s / n

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Calculating System Reliability
—Reliability of a system is the product of component reliabilities
RS = (R1) (R2) (R3) . . . (Rn)
RS = reliability of the product or system
R1 = reliability of the components 1

System in Series
How can we improve reliability of a system?
—Increase reliability by placing components in parallel
—Increase reliability by placing components as backup

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 Problem
• Chosen for its simplicity, a flashlight is an excellent example of reliability in
series. Nearly everyone who has used a flashlight before has experienced
some sort of failure.

• Given the reliability of the components of the flashlight, what is the overall
reliability of the system?

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Reliability in Parallel

—A parallel system is a system that is able to function if at least one

of its components is functioning.
—In parallel system, all of the components that are in parallel with
each other must fail in order to have a system failure.
—This is opposite of a system in series in which if one component
fails, the entire system fails.

Rp = 1- (1-R1 ) (1-R2 ) (1-R3 ) (1-R4 ) ….. (1-Rn )

Where Rp = Reliability of parallel system
Ri = Reliability of component
n = number of components in system

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Problem#1
—In the 1920s, an airplane called the Ford Tri-Motor
was built. As the name suggests, this plane has three
motors to increase its reliability. Today triple engine
aircrafts include DC-10 and L-1011.
—If each motor on this aircraft has a reliability of 0.95,
what is the overall reliability of the Ford Tri-Motor
airplanes?

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Solution

• Result:

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Reliability in Redundant Systems and
Backup Components
—Backup or spare components, used only if primary component
fails, increase overall system reliability.
—Rb = R1 + rb(1-R1 )
Where Rb = reliability of backup system
R1 = reliability of primary component
rb = reliability of backup component
1-R1 = chance of having to use backup

Component with Backup

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Problem# 2
• An office security system at Delco, Inc. has three component parts, all
of which must work for the system to function.
• Part 1 has a reliability of 80%, part 2 has a reliability of 98%, and part
3 a reliability of 90%.
• Compute the reliability of the system.

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Solution# 1
—The reliability of the system is
—Rs =(0.80)(0.98)(0.90) = 0.7056

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Problem#2
—Delco, Inc., from Problem 1, is not happy with the reliability of its
security system and has decided to improve it.
—The company will add a backup component to part 1 of its security
system. The backup component will also have a reliability of 0.75.
—What is the reliability of the improved security system?

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Solution#2
—The reliability of the improved system is:
—R1 with backup = (0.80) + (0.75) (1 - 0.80) = 0.95
—Rs = (0.95) (0.98 ) (0.90)= 0.8379

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Problem#3
• Below is a representation of an alarm system installed to deter
thieves from stealing a company warehouse. The system contains
series, parallel, and backup components.
• Calculate the reliability of the system.

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Solution#3

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Problem Solving Method

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZXDGQSuF9I
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDleByJS2Ws

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