Introduction:

We analyze field failure data so that we can better characterize the equipment's performance after it has been placed in  service. There are two types of analysis that are typically performed:

• Statistical Analysis. This type of analysis seeks to characterize the performance of a population of similar machines. For example, if we have 6 identical milling machines, what is the average Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) among this population of machines, Mean Time to Repair (MTTR), availability, and maintenance cost? We also look for the sensitivity of these values to specific failure modes and for the primary sources of uncertainty in these values.

Figure 1. Histogram of Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) for Milling Machine.

Figure 2. Top Contributors to Equipment Failure.

• Equipment Analysis. This analysis provides the same type of results as the statistical analysis, but in this case we calculate results for each individual machine. We can then see which machine is performing best and which is worst. For a selected machine we can drill down to find out which failure modes are occurring most frequently and we can look for trends.

Figure 3. MTBF values for seven identical machines.

Figure 4. Failure Mode Parito for a Milling Machine.

Benefits:

• Understand the performance of a group of similar machines,
• Identify performance differences among similar machines,
• Identify key contributors to MTBF, availability, down time or maintenance cost, and
• Provide equipment suppliers with quantitative feedback concerning equipment performance.

Capabilities:

CSR's WinR-DP™ software provides a capability for quickly analyzing field failure data.  Both statistical analyses of population of similar machines as well as machine-specific analysis are supported.