I encourage the use of MTBF and does prove useful. Periodically the question of what constitutes a failure comes up; genuine machine trips, 'knock on' trips caused by upsets in other parts of the process, etc Interested if others have similar experience.

Tue Sep 01, 05:56:02 AM CDT

Hi Ricky,
MTBF is a good metric for sure. in a gas plant I worked at we raised the interval between shut down from about 30 days to 130. That certainly got some applause. Problem was that when we restarted MTBF became hours... but that gave the crew something to work on.
I guess machines dont like to stop. Certainly measuring the MTBF gave a good excuse to have a 100 day celebration.
More people should measure this in the oil and gas industry. They should also measure MTBF of redundant systems. What are your thoughts on that?
Regards
Steve Turner

Tue Sep 01, 07:46:28 PM CDT

Yes, MTBF is a great metric.

Wed Sep 09, 01:54:33 PM CDT

I used MTBF and Bath tub curve to keep a track on the life of the gears in my university days in a project named " Performance Monitoring of Gears" and i got a nearly fine bath tub curve......Even my this project was judged as the best project in a competition

Tue Sep 29, 06:40:02 AM CDT

Sounds like everyone agrees. However does everyone agree we need to use MTBF at the function level. Let's say we have a partial functional failure, ex: the conveyor is operating at 80% of capacity. Do we count it as a failure?

Thu Oct 01, 11:10:48 AM CDT

I believe in MTBF and if anyone needs a MTBF Users Guide I developed send me an email at rsmith@gpallied.com and I will send you a copy.

Sun Oct 25, 05:16:35 AM CDT

I believe in MTBF and if anyone needs a MTBF Users Guide I developed send me an email at rsmith@gpallied.com and I will send you a copy.

Sun Oct 25, 05:16:36 AM CDT