Daily Archives: 4-February-2019

erforming an MTBF prediction is to designing HW as putting a license plate on your car is to driving the car. You need the license to legally drive the car, but it adds no value to your driving experience. Similarly, every company I have worked for demands a predicted MTBF for every HW product, but it adds no value to the design process. In fact, I would argue that generating the MTBF predictions actually adds negative value to the product deployment because it generates a number that is often misused by customers to estimate spare requirements and field support costs. Since no one has told customers otherwise, they think the MTBF value accurately reflects the real failure rate of a product. In fact, MTBF predictions provide a gross estimate of the rate of random parts failure at product maturity. Continue reading →