Estimating reliability characteristics in presence of censored data: a case study in a light commercial vehicle manufacturing system

The reliability analysis of the critical components is the basic way to establish the efficiency of complex systems. For this issue, it is very important to select capable methods for service data collection as well as for analysis. The study introduces a framework defining a general approach for Failure Process Modeling (FPM). The paper also discusses the critical role of censored data and the need for a continuous and repetitive application of the proposed approach during the service life of systems. A case study in a light commercial vehicle manufacturing system is presented. The distributions of some reliability parameters of several critical components (i.e. reliability, hazard rate, etc.) have been estimated, repetitively during the system life, from the date of the initial installation onwards with a growing collection of time to failures. The relevant effect of the number of data, and in particular of censored data, on the robustness of reliability estimation and evaluation process is investigated.