TABLE OF CONTENTS Reliability growth [1 5] is either a projection of the reliability of a system or an equipment to some future development time from information available now from predictions or prior experience on identical or similar systems or equipment; or the monitoring of the reliability, of the MTBF, or of the failure rate of the system or equipment to establish the trend in the increase of the reliability, the increase of the MTBF, or the decrease in the failure rate with engineering, research, development, test, analyze, and fix (TAAF) and further test time until it passes its acceptance tests or is delivered and operated by the user. Such reliability growth curves are shown in Figs. 16.1s, 16.2, and 16.3. Two major types of reliability growth trends are shown in Fig. 16.4. One type of an MTBF growth curve and one type of a failure rate improvement curve are shown in Fig. 16.5.
Reliability growth studies are necessary to insure that, from information available at the beginning of a project, the reliability, MTBF, or failure rate goals are capable of being met by acceptance or delivery and use time. A growth model is used and projected to the project completion date. If this projected R, m, or ? is equal to or beyond the specified goal, then the project manager would be confident that she or he will be able to meet the project's R, m, or ? requirements. Otherwise, the manager will have to reassess the...
