Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers (대한산업공학회지)

Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers (대한산업공학회)
권호 표지

Estimation of Product Reliability with Incomplete Field Warranty Data

불완전한 사용현장 보증 데이터를 이용한 제품 신뢰도 추정

  • Lim, Tae-Jin (Department of Industrial & Information Systems Engineering, Soongsil University)
  • 임태진 (숭실대학교 산업.정보시스템공학과)
  • Published : 2002.12.31
Download PDF
⟨ Previous Next ⟩

Abstract

As more companies are equipped with data aquisition systems for their products, huge amount of field warranty data has been accumulated. We focus on the case when the field data for a given product comprise with the number of sales and the number of the first failures for each period. The number of censored items and their ages are assumed to be given. This type of data are incomplete in the sense that the age of a failed item is unknown. We construct a model for this type of data and propose an algorithm for nonparametric maximum likelihood estimation of the product reliability. Unlike the nonhomogeneous Poisson process(NHPP) model, our method can handle the data with censored items as well as those with small population. A few examples are investigated to characterize our model, and a real field warranty data set is analyzed by the method.

Keywords

References

  1. Baxter, L. A. (1994), Estimation from Quasi Life Tables, Biometrika, 81(3), 567-577 https://doi.org/10.1093/biomet/81.3.567
  2. Dempster, A. P., Laird, N. M. and Rubin, D. B. (1977), Maximum Likelihood from Incomplete Data via the EM Algorithm, Journal of Royal Statistical Society, Series B, 39,1-22
  3. Kalbfleisch, J. D., Lawless, J. F. and Robinson, J. A. (1991), Methods for the Analysis and Prediction of Warranty Claims, Technometrics, 33(3), 273-285 https://doi.org/10.2307/1268780
  4. Kaplan, E. and Meier, P. (1958), Nonparametric Estimation from Incomplete Observation, Jour. Amer, Statist. Assoc., 53, 457-481
  5. Karim, M. R., Yamamoto, W. and Suzuki, K. (2001), Statistical Analysis of Marginal Count Failure Data, Lifetime Data Analysis, 7(2), 173-186 https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1011300907152
  6. Tortorella, M. (1996), Life Estimation from Pooled Discrete Renewal Counts, in N. P. Jewell et al. (eds.) Lifetime Data: Models in Reliability and Survival Analysis, 331-338