Reliability Statistics

One important aspect of reliability engineering is statistics. The reliability engineer should have a good grasp of statistics and distributions. All reliability-related failure mechanisms can be mapped to a particular distribution type. The most common distributions used in reliability studies are the exponential distribution, the normal distribution, the lognormal distribution, and the Weibull distribution.

Reliability is a discipline driven by data. In order to predict the reliability of a component, one must use test data to predict the response of the component or electronic system. This requires an in-depth understanding of statistics and distributions. This material covers basic statistics and distributions used for reliability calculations, how to handle situations where no failures occur, how to transform data from test structures to use conditions, and how to calculate system level reliability based on individual reliability numbers from components or failure mechanisms.