Analysis of Marginal Count Failure Data by using Covariates

Manufacturers collect and analyze field reliability data to enhance the quality and reliability of their products and to improve customer satisfaction. To reduce the data collecting and maintenance costs, the amount of data maintained for evaluating product quality and reliability should be minimized. With this in mind, some industrial companies assemble warranty databases by gathering data from different sources for a particular time period. This “marginal count failure data” does not provide (i) the number of failures by when the product entered service, (ii) the number of failures by product age, or (iii) information about the effects of the operating season or environment. This article describes a method for estimating age-based claim rates from marginal count failure data. It uses covariates to identify variations in claims relative to variables such as manufacturing characteristics, time of manufacture, operating season or environment. A Poisson model is presented, and the method is illustrated using warranty claims data for two electrical products.