What is mean time to failure?

Mean time between failures (MTBF) is the predicted

elapsed time between inherent failures of a system during
operation. MTBF can be calculated as the
arithmetic mean (average) time between failures of a
system. The term is used in both plant and equipment
maintenance contexts.
 Exponential
• The exponential model, with only one unknown
parameter, is the simplest of all life distribution
models. The key equations for the exponential
are shown below:
• Note that the failure rate reduces to the constant λ for
any time. The exponential distribution is the only
distribution to have a constant failure rate. Also,
another name for the exponential mean is the Mean
Time To Fail or MTTF and we have MTTF = 1/λ.
• The cumulative hazard function for the exponential is
just the integral of the failure rate or H(t)=λt.
• The PDF for the exponential has the familiar shape
shown below.
• The normal distribution, also known as the Gaussian
distribution, is the most widely-used general purpose
distribution.
• There are some who argue that the normal distribution is
inappropriate for modeling lifetime data because the left-hand
limit of the distribution extends to negative infinity. This could
conceivably result in modeling negative times-to-failure.
However, provided that the distribution in question has a
relatively high mean and a relatively small standard deviation,
the issue of negative failure times should not present itself as a
problem.
• Nevertheless, the normal distribution has been shown to be
useful for modeling the lifetimes of consumable items, such as
printer toner cartridges.
The normal mean or MTTF is actually one of the parameters of the distribution, usually denoted as Because the
normal distribution is symmetrical, the median and the mode are always equal to the mean:
Normal Distribution Probability Plotting Example
7 units are put on a life test and run until failure. The failure times are 85, 90, 95, 100,
105, 110, and 115 hours. Assuming a normal distribution, estimate the parameters
using probability plotting.
`
Weibull Distribution
Gamma Distribution
 ranking of data

• In statistics, "ranking" refers to the data

transformation in which numerical or ordinal
values are replaced by their rank when the
data are sorted. For example, the numerical
data 3.4, 5.1, 2.6, 7.3 are observed, the ranks
of these data items would be 2, 3, 1 and
4 respectively.