Information

A way to organize field return data that captures the time-to-failure and censored data. A Nevada charts uses sales and returns and organizes the count of returns by which month or week of sales it originated and when the return was reported or arrived. This convenient ongoing chart enables one to tally returns as they arrive while preserving the necessary information for analysis.

A structured process or procedure to determine the most underlying or fundamental factor or reason for a failure.RCA is used to gather the necessary information to identify suitable short-term and long-term solutions to avoid similar failures in the future.

The process of collecting and analyzing information from in-service equipment to determine the reliability characteristics of each item under actual operating conditions.

The process of creating a statement that includes the function(s), environment and use conditions, probability of survival, and duration for an item. It is the reliability performance objective for the item under consideration. It provides a detailed statement that is measurable to communicate the desired reliability performance of an item. Included is sufficient information to guide decisions related to material selection, design architecture, and types of or expected environmental and use stresses.

A technique to explore the many potential or actual causes of product or system failure. FTA is a top-down analysis method, where one starts with a symptom or fault and then lists the many possible causes in a structured manner. It provides a structured way to organize information about the occurrence of the top event. FTA may be useful to create a system reliability model to estimate system reliability performance or to organize brainstorming potential paths of events that lead to the occurrence of the top event.