Reliability Calculations in Excel
In Operations Management today we used Excel to calculate product reliability. Reliability is defined as "the ability of a product, service, part, or system to perform its intended function under a prescribed set of circumstances" (Stevenson, 2009). In order to calulate reliability over a given length of time we need to use the following formula: P(no failure) = e -t/MTBF where: e = 2.7183 t = Length of service before failure MTBF = Mean Time Between Failures One of the cases we did in class involved an auto detailing company that wanted to calculate the reliability of its vacuum cleaners. Excel provides an "EXP" funtion that we can easily apply here. After entering all data for the problem as shown on the spreadsheet below, we type the formula =EXP(-A5/$B$2) in cell B5 and copy down. Next we plot the distribution for t=0 to the maximum life expectancy of 20 years using a line graph. What we end up with looks like a classic case of "ex
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