Proceedings of the 2022 3rd International Conference on Management Science and Engineering Management (ICMSEM 2022)

The Misconception and Risk of Using MTBF as a Reliability Indicator for Industry Management

Authors
Fuqing Yuan1, *, Jinmei Lu1
1Department of Engineering and Safety, University of Tromsø, Postboks 6050 Langnes, 9037, Tromsø, Norway
*Corresponding author. Email: fuqing.yuan@uit.no
Corresponding Author
Fuqing Yuan
Available Online 15 December 2022.
DOI
10.2991/978-94-6463-038-1_30How to use a DOI?
Keywords
MTBF; MTTF; Reliability Indicator; Misconception
Abstract

MTBF (Mean Time between Failure) is perhaps the most common indicator for reliability level used in the industries. This paper examines the statistical foundation of this indicator and investigates the limitation and risk of using it. Examples are provided to demonstrate the errors when misusing the MTBF. The examination is not trivial if the error is found significant. Some misconceptions on the MTBF are also discussed to raise the awareness of using this indicator correctly in the paper. Furthermore, the paper points out some results from the demonstration in the paper might be opposite to our intuition. Industrial engineers should avoid to make decision according to those unverified intuition. Upon the limitation and problems, the paper furthermore proposes some approaches to mitigate the limitation and the problem of the use of the MTBF.

Copyright
© 2023 The Author(s)
Open Access
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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Volume Title
Proceedings of the 2022 3rd International Conference on Management Science and Engineering Management (ICMSEM 2022)
Series
Atlantis Highlights in Engineering
Publication Date
15 December 2022
ISBN
978-94-6463-038-1
ISSN
2589-4943
DOI
10.2991/978-94-6463-038-1_30How to use a DOI?
Copyright
© 2023 The Author(s)
Open Access
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Cite this article

TY  - CONF
AU  - Fuqing Yuan
AU  - Jinmei Lu
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/12/15
TI  - The Misconception and Risk of Using MTBF as a Reliability Indicator for Industry Management
BT  - Proceedings of the 2022 3rd International Conference on Management Science and Engineering Management (ICMSEM 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 324
EP  - 332
SN  - 2589-4943
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-038-1_30
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-038-1_30
ID  - Yuan2022
ER  -