Making Maintenance and ReplacementRelCode uses Weibull analysis, the globally-accepted standard for reliability analysis. Using Weibull as its base, RelCode has been accessorized with a wide range of added-value options.
Essentially, a Weibull distribution provides failure pattern analysis based upon your own actual failure and suspension data. These failure patterns are graphically displayed in RelCode. They reveal the varying risk-of-failure over the life span of the machine part.
There's more. RelCode also uses your cost information as well. That's your estimate of the cost of replacing a part on an emergency basis relative to the cost of replacing it preventively. This enables the program to derive what the optimal time of replacement will be — the optimal time being the point where replacing the part earlier would result in an unnecessary waste of useful life, and replacing it later would result in an unacceptable degree of risk of the part failing in use.
Further … an understanding of the failure pattern will provide insight as to what is causing the failures:
A decreasing failure rate would suggest
“infant mortality”. That is, defective items fail early and the failure rate decreases
over time as they fall out of the population.- A constant failure rate suggests that items are failing from random events.
- An increasing failure rate suggests “wear out” — parts are more likely to fail as time goes on.
That's how RelCode's root cause failure analysis reveals why and how equipment fails. Read a Weibull Analysis real-life story about the Royal Australian Air Force's use of RelCode for determining the failure pattern for parts for the Lockheed C130 aircraft.
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