The MTBF and Modeling System Reliability

podcast episode with speaker Chris Jackson

The Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) appears in lots of textbooks and standards, so it must be really important right? Well, not really. The MTBF is the most overused and misunderstood term in reliability engineering, including system reliability modeling, where we can find textbooks and standards with equations that allow you to calculate system MTBF from component MTBFs. If you are unsure why the MTBF is bad, especially for system reliability modeling, then join us for this webinar, where we will illustrate with pictures (not equations) what the MTBF is and how bad it can be to focus on it as a reliability performance metric.

This Accendo Reliability webinar was originally broadcast on 26 March 2024.

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To view the recorded video/audio and PDF workbook of the event, visit the webinar page.

Additional content that may be of interest

Only Have MTBFs episode

How Do I Do MTBF Testing episode

What’s Wrong with MTBF episode

How to Talk About MTBF episode

Exploring Alternatives to MTBF

You may already know my position on MTBF. If not, in short, do not use MTBF at all, ever, in any form. So what should we use instead.

What To Do When A Customer Requests MTBF

what specific steps you can take to help your customer actually use your the stated reliability goal and not MTBF.

What You Need to Know About MTBF

No time to understand MTBF, and your organization relies on the reliability of its products, you are almost certainly in trouble.

What to Do About MTBF Use

The proper and improver responses to someone asking about or requesting MTBF information. Some to avoid and some to use regularly.

How Do I Do MTBF Testing?

If you want to learn more about MTBF testing and how it might (or might not) work then view this recording.

Why You Should Avoid MTBF

This morning's email included a question on why I was so against using MTBF. This episode is my answer and why one should avoid MTBF