News & Events.
exida Article Featured in July Automation.com eBook
July 13, 2018
The article entitled Getting Realistic Failure Rate Data is featured in the July 2018 Advancing Automation Safety Innovations eBook published by Automation.com.
The discipline of Reliability Engineering depends upon a key metric: failure rate. In the past, it was practical to perform a “life test,” where by a set of devices were operated in a defined set of conditions with failure times recorded. This failure time data was analyzed to obtain the failure rate of the device. This technique was practical in the 1950s and 1960s, when vacuum tubes failed so frequently that “tube testers” were seen in retail stores where new vacuum tubes were sold.
Today’s technology is far more reliable such that a life test is rarely seen, except perhaps for wearout testing of mechanical devices.