Reliability Analysis Using MINITAB and Python

8 Case Studies

Chapter Overview and Learning Objectives

• To understand the concept of parametric and nonparametric reliability analyses.
• To apply Minitab and Python to conduct parametric and nonparametric reliability analyses.
• To understand the objectives of warranty analysis.
• To apply Minitab to conduct a warranty analysis.
• To understand stress–strength interference and apply both Minitab and Python to construct the plots and compute the probability of stress failure.

8.1 Parametric Reliability Analysis

Parametric reliability analysis assumes that the reliability data follows certain types of statistical distributions. For example, a product’s failure data could be well described by a lognormal distribution. In that case, it is part of parametric reliability analysis or parametric distribution analysis.

In previous chapters, we learned that there were different types of failure times:

• Exact failure time
• Right-censored data
• Interval-censored data
• Left-censored data

More detailed descriptions are given in previous chapters. A point here is that depending on failure types, computation will be varied, and we also need to select functions or write codes in Minitab and Python properly. Based on the next case study, we could learn the research questions to be explored and the approaches using Minitab and Python to answer the questions.

8.1.1 Description of Case Study

Table 8.1 shows the time to failure (hour) of tires used on loader machines in mining and the axle on which ...