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Question : Problem: MTBF calculation onn components
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I'm trying to determine the MTBF of various components. I have the numberof failures and the number of components installed. Can anyone tell me the formula for calculating the MTBF for a component? Thanks in advance.
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Answer : Problem: MTBF calculation onn components
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"not an accurate reflection of the equipments MTBF as expressed by the manufacturer?"
I would never consider a manufactures MTBF ratings outside of something like the aerospace industry as being truly accurate, as most of them base their ratings based on a combination of theoretical extrapolations and testing over a limited period of time of a relevant sample of actual units. For example if they expected a MTBF of 10 years they would test 100 units for 6 months and expect about 5 to fail in that period of time, if its somewhere close to that they will give it a MTBF of 10 years.
In actual real world use that number could be way off the mark, and it could go either considerably higher, or lower than the manufactures ratings. It happens all the time, for example the drives in my servers have a MTBF rating of over 1M hours, or 104 years, and I have 100 of them, so I should expect to replace about 1 a year, but I replace 6 times that on average, so that 1M hour MTBF rating is pure BS in my opinion.
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