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Increasingly, managers and engineers who are responsible for manufacturing and other industrial pursuits are incorporating a reliability focus into their strategic and tactical plans and initiatives. This trend is affecting numerous functional areas, including machine/system design and procurement, plant operations and plant maintenance. With its origins in the aviation industry, reliability engineering, as a discipline, has historically been focused primarily on assuring product reliability. More and more, these methods are being employed to assure the production reliability of manufacturing plants and equipment often as an enabler to lean manufacturing. This article provides an introduction to the most relevant and practical of these methods for plant reliability engineering, including: Basic reliability calculations for failure rate, MTBF, availability, etc. An introduction to the exponential distribution the cornerstone of the reliability methods. Identifying failure time dependencies using the versatile Weibull system. Developing an effective field data collection system. Introduction The origins of the field of reliability engineering, at least the demand for it, can be traced back to the point at which man began to depend upon machines for his livelihood. The Noria, for instance, is an ancient pump thought to be the worlds first sophisticated machine. Utilizing hydraulic energy from the flow of a river or stream, the Noria utilized buckets to transfer water to troughs, viaducts and other distribution devices to irrigate fields and provide water to communities. If the community Noria failed, the people who depended upon it for their supply of food were at risk. Survival has always been a great source of motivation for reliability and dependability. While the origins of its demand are ancient, reliability engineering as a technical discipline truly flourished along with the growth of commercial aviation following World War II. It became rapidly apparent to managers of aviation industry companies that crashes are bad for business. Karen Bernowski, editor of Quality Progress, revealed in one of her editorials research into the media value of death by various means, which was conducted by MIT statistic professor Arnold Barnett and reported in 1994. Barnett evaluated the number of New York Times front-page news articles per 1,000 deaths by various means. He found that cancer-related deaths yielded 0.02 front-page news articles per 1,000 deaths, homicide yielded 1.7 per 1,000 deaths, AIDS yielded 2.3 per 1,000 deaths, and aviation-related accidents yielded a whopping 138.2 articles per 1,000 deaths! The cost and high-profile nature of aviation related accidents helped to motivate the aviation industry to participate heavily in the development of the reliability engineering discipline. Likewise, due to the critical nature of military equipment in defense, reliability engineering techniques have long been employed to assure operational readiness. Many of our standards in the reliability engineering field are MIL Standards or have their origins in military activities. Reliability engineering deals with the longevity and dependability of parts, products and systems. More poignantly, it is about controlling risk. Reliability engineering incorporates a wide variety of analytical techniques designed to help engineers understand the failure modes
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Where: = Failure rate (sometimes referred to as the hazard rate) T = Total running time/cycles/miles/etc. during an investigation period for both failed and nonfailed items. r = The total number of failures occurring during the investigation period. For example, if five electric motors operate for a collective total time of 50 years with five functional failures during the period, the failure rate is 0.1 failures per year. Another very basic concept is the mean time between/to failure (MTBF/MTTF). The only difference between MTBF and MTTF is that we employ MTBF when referring to items that are repaired when they fail. For items that are simply thrown away and replaced, we use the term MTTF. The computations are the same. The basic calculation to estimate mean time between failure (MTBF) and mean time to failure (MTTF), both measures of central tendency, is simply the reciprocal of the failure rate function. It is calculated using the following equation.
Where: = Mean time between/to failure T = Total running time/cycles/miles/etc. during an investigation period for both failed and nonfailed items. r = The total number of failures occurring during the investigation period. The MTBF for our industrial electric motor example is 10 years, which is the reciprocal of the failure rate for the motors. Incidentally, we would estimate MTBF for electric motors that are rebuilt upon failure. For smaller motors that are considered disposable, we would state the measure of central tendency as MTTF. The failure rate is a basic component of many more complex reliability calculations. Depending upon the mechanical/electrical design, operating context, environment and/or maintenance effectiveness, a machines failure rate as a function of time may decline, remain constant, increase linearly or increase geometrically (Figure 1). The importance of failure rate vs. time will be discussed in more detail later.
Figure 1. Different Failure Rates vs. Time Scenarios The Bathtub Curve Individuals that have received only basic training in probability and statistics are probably most familiar with the Gaussian or normal distribution, which is associated with familiar bellshaped probability density curve. The Gaussian distribution is generally applicable to data sets where the two most common measures of central tendency, mean and median, are approximately equal. Surprisingly, despite the versatility of the Gaussian distribution in modeling probabilities for phenomenon ranging from standardized test scores to the birth weights of babies, it is not the dominant distribution employed in reliability engineering. The
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Figure 2. The Much-maligned Bathtub Curve The human body is an excellent example of a system that follows the bathtub curve. People, and other organic species for that matter, tend to suffer a high failure rate (mortality) during their first years of life, particularly the first few years, but the rate decreases as the child grows older. Assuming a person reaches puberty and survives his or her teenage years, his or her mortality rate becomes fairly constant and remains there until age (time) dependent illnesses begin to increase the mortality rate (wearout). Numerous influences affect mortality rates, including prenatal care and mothers nutrition, quality and availability of medical care, environment and nutrition, lifestyle choices and, of course, genetic predisposition. These factors can be metaphorically compared to factors that influence machine life. Design and procurement is analogous to genetic predisposition; installation and commissioning is analogous to prenatal care and mothers nutrition; and lifestyle choices and availability of medical care is analogous to maintenance effectiveness and proactive control over operating conditions. The exponential distribution The exponential distribution, the most basic and widely used reliability prediction formula, models machines with the constant failure rate, or the flat section of the bathtub curve. Most industrial machines spend most of their lives in the constant failure rate, so it is widely applicable. Below is the basic equation for estimating the reliability of a machine that follows the exponential distribution, where the failure rate is constant as a function of time.
Where: R(t) = Reliability estimate for a period of time, cycles, miles, etc. (t). e = Base of the natural logarithms (2.718281828) = Failure rate (1/MTBF, or 1/MTTF) In our electric motor example, if you assume a constant failure rate the likelihood of running a motor for six years without a failure, or the projected reliability, is 55 percent. This is calculated as follows: R(6) = 2.718281828-(0.1* 6) R(6) = 0.5488 = ~ 55% In other words, after six years, about 45% of the population of identical motors operating in an identical application can probabilistically be expected to fail. It is worth reiterating at this point that these calculations project the probability for a population. Any given individual from the population could fail on the first day of operation while another individual could last 30 years. That is the nature of probabilistic reliability projections. A characteristic of the exponential distribution is the MTBF occurs at the point at which the
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Where: pdf(t) =Life frequency distribution for a given time (t) e = Base of the natural logarithms (2.718281828) = Failure rate (1/MTBF, or 1/MTTF) In our electric motor example, the actual likelihood of failure at three years is calculated as follows: pdf(3) = 01. * 2.718281828-(0.1* 3) pdf(3) = 0.1 * 0.7408 pdf(3) = .07408 = ~ 7.4% In our example, if we assume a constant failure rate, which follows the exponential distribution, the life distribution, or pdf for the industrial electric motors, is expressed in Figure 3. Dont be confused by the declining nature of the pdf function. Yes, the failure rate is constant, but the pdf mathematically assumes failure without replacement, so the population from which failures can occur is continuously reducing asymptotically approaching zero.
Figure 3. The Probability Density Function (pdf) The cumulative distribution function (cdf) is simply the cumulative number of failures one might expect over a period of time. For the exponential distribution, the failure rate is constant, so the relative rate at which failed components are added to the cdf remains constant. However, as the population declines as a result of failure, the actual number of mathematically estimated failures decreases as a function of the declining population. Much like the pdf asymptotically approaches zero, the cdf asymptotically approaches one (Figure 4).
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Figure 4. Failure Rate and the Cumulative Distribution Function The declining failure rate portion of the bathtub curve, which is often called the infant mortality region, and the wear out region will be discussed in the following section addressing the versatile Weibull distribution. Weibull Distribution Originally developed by Wallodi Weibull, a Swedish mathematician, Weibull analysis is easily the most versatile distribution employed by reliability engineers. While it is called a distribution, it is actually a tool that enables the reliability engineer to first characterize the probability density function (failure frequency distribution) of a set of failure data to characterize the failures as early life, constant (exponential) or wear out (Gaussian or log normal) by plotting time to failure data on a special plotting paper with the log of the times/cycles/miles to failure plotted a log scaled X-axis versus the cumulative percent of the population represented by each failure on a log-log scaled Y-axis (Figure 5).
Figure 5. The Simple Weibull Plot Annotated Once plotted, the linear slope of the resultant curve is an important variable, called the shape parameter, represented by , which is used to adjust the exponential distribution to fit a wide number of failure distributions. In general, if the coefficient, or shape parameter, is less than 1.0, the distribution exhibits early life, or infant mortality failures. If the shape parameter exceeds about 3.5, the data are time dependent and indicate wearout failures. This data set typically assumes the Gaussian, or normal, distribution. As the coefficient increases above ~ 3.5, the bell-shaped distribution tightens, exhibiting increasing kurtosis (peakedness at the top of the curve) and a smaller standard deviation. Many data sets will exhibit two or even three distinct regions. It is common for reliability engineers to plot, for example, one curve representing the shape parameter during run in and another curve to represent the constant or gradually increasing failure rate. In some instances, a third distinct linear slope emerges to identify a third shape, the wearout region. In these instances, the pdf of the failure data do in fact assume the familiar bathtub curve shape (Figure 6). Most mechanical equipment used in plants, however, exhibit an infant mortality region and a constant or gradually increasing failure rate region. It is rare to see a curve representing wearout emerge. The characteristic life, or (lower case Greek Eta), is the Weibull approximation of the MTBF. It is always the function of time, miles or cycles where 63.21% of the units under evaluation have failed, which is the MTBF/MTTF for the exponential distribution.
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Figure 6. Depending upon the shape parameter, the Weibull failure density curve can assume several distributions, which is what makes it so versatile for reliability engineering. As a caveat to tie this tool back to excellence in maintenance and operations excellence, if we were to more effectively control the forcing functions that lead to mechanical failure in bearings, gears, etc., such as lubrication, contamination control, alignment, balance, appropriate operation, etc., more machines would actually reach their fatigue life. Machines that reach their fatigue life will exhibit the familiar wearout characteristic. Using the coefficient to adjust the failure rate equation as a function of time yields the following general equation:
Where: h(t) = Failure rate (or hazard rate) for a given time (t) e = Base of the natural logarithms (2.718281828) = Estimated MTBF/MTTF = Weibull shape parameter from plot. And, the following reliability function:
Where: R(t) =Reliability estimate for a period of time, cycles, miles, etc. (t) e = Base of the natural logarithms (2.718281828) = Estimated MTBF/MTTF = Weibull shape parameter from plot. And, the following probability density function (pdf):
Where: pdf(t) =Probability density function estimate for a period of time, cycles, miles, etc. (t) e = Base of the natural logarithms (2.718281828) = Estimated MTBF/MTTF = Weibull shape parameter from plot. It should be noted that when the equals 1.0, the Weibull distribution takes the form of the exponential distribution on which it is based. To the uninitiated, the mathematics required to perform Weibull analysis may look daunting. But once you understand the mechanics of the formulas, the math is really quite simple. Moreover, software will do most of the work for us today, but it is important to have an understanding of the underlying theory so that the plant reliability engineer can effectively deploy the powerful Weibull analysis technique. In our previously discussed example of electric motors, we previously assumed the exponential distribution. However, if Weibull analysis revealed early life failures by yielding a shape parameter of 0.5, the estimate of reliability at six years time would be ~46%, not the ~55% estimated assuming the exponential distribution. In order to reduce wearout failures, we would need to lean on our suppliers to provide better-built and delivered quality and reliability, store the motors better to avoid rust, corrosion, fretting and other static wear mechanisms, and do a better job of installing and starting up new or rebuilt machines.
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Figure 7. Various Reliability Projections as a Function of Time for Different Weibull Shape Parameters The Multi-Slope Weibull Plot Frequently, when drawing a best-fit regression line through the data points on a Weibull plot, the coefficient of correlation is poor, meaning the actual data points stray a great distance from regression line. This is assessed by examining the coefficient of correlation R, or more conservatively, R2, which denotes data variability. When correlation is poor, the reliability engineer should examine the data to evaluate if two or more patterns exist, which can denote major differences in failure modes, operating context, etc. Often, this produces two or more estimates of beta (Figure 8).
Figure 8. An Example of a Multi-beta Weibull Plot As we see in our example in Figure 8, the data set works better when two distinct regression lines are drawn. The first line, exhibits a beta shape parameter of 0.5, suggesting early life failures. The second line exhibits a beta shape of 3.0, suggesting that the risk of failure
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Where: Rs(t) System reliability for given time (t) R1-n(t) Subsystem or sub-function reliability for given time (t) So, for a simple system with three subsystems, or sub-functions, each having an estimated reliability of 0.90 (90%) at time (t), the system reliability is calculated as 0.90 X 0.90 X 0.90 = 0.729, or about 73%.
Figure 9. Simple Serial System Parallel Systems Often, design engineers will incorporate redundancy into critical machines. Reliability engineers call these parallel systems. These systems may be designed as active parallel systems or standby parallel systems. The block diagram for a simple two component parallel system is shown in Figure 10.
Figure 10. Simple parallel system the system reliability is increased to 99% due to the redundancy.
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Where: Rs(t) System reliability for given time (t) R1-n(t) Subsystem or sub-function reliability for given time (t) The simple parallel system in our example with two components in parallel, each having a reliability of 0.90, has a total system reliability of 1 (0.1 X 0.1) = 0.99. So, the system reliability was significantly improved. There are some shortcut methods for calculating parallel system reliability when all subsystems have the same estimated reliability. More often, systems contain parallel and serial subcomponents as depicted in Figure 11. The calculation of standby systems requires knowledge about the reliability of the switching mechanism. In the interest of simplicity and brevity, this topic will be reserved for a future article.
Figure 11. Combination System with Parallel and Serial Elements r out of n Systems (r/n Systems) An important concept to plant reliability engineers is the concept of r/n systems. These systems require that r units from a total population in n be available for use. A great industrial example is coal pulverizers in an electric power generating plant. Often, the engineers design this function in the plant using an r/n approach. For instance, a unit has four pulverizers and the unit requires that three of the four be operable to run at the units full load (see Figure 12).
Figure 12. Simple r/n system example Three of the four components are required. The reliability calculation for an r/n system can be reduced to a simple cumulative binomial distribution calculation, the formula for which is:
Where: Rs = System reliability given the actual number of failures (r) is less than or equal the maximum allowable (k) r = The actual number of failures k = The maximum allowable number of failures n = The total number of units in the system p = The probability of survival, or the subcomponent reliability for a given time (t). This equation is somewhat more complicated. In our pulverizer example, assuming a
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Figure 13. Good field data collection enables you to break the random trap. Conclusions This brief introduction to reliability engineering methods is intended to expose the otherwise uninitiated plant engineer to the world of quantitative reliability engineering. The subject is quite broad, however, and Ive only touched on the major reliability methods that I believe are most applicable to the plant engineer. I encourage you to further investigate the field of reliability engineering methods, concentrating on the following topics, among others: More detailed understanding of the Weibull distribution and its applications More detailed understanding of the exponential distribution and its applications The Gaussian distribution and its applications The log-normal distribution and its applications Confidence intervals (binomial, chi-square/Poisson, etc.) Beta distribution and its applications
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