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8. Assessing Product Reliability
8.3. Reliability Data Collection

8.3.1.

How do you plan a reliability assessment test?

The Plan for a reliability test ends with a detailed description of the mechanics of the test and starts with stating your assumptions and what you want to discover or prove Planning a reliability test means: 
  • How long should you test?
  • How many units have to be put on test?
    • For repairable systems, this is often limited to 1.
  • If acceleration modeling is part of the experimental plan
    • What combination of stresses and how many experimental cells?
    • How many units go in each cell?
The answers to these questions depend on: 
  • What models are you assuming?
  • What decisions or conclusions do you want to make after running the test and analyzing the data?
  • What risks are you willing to take of making wrong decisions or conclusions?
It is not always possible, or practical, to completely answer all of these questions for every model we might want to use. This section looks at answers, or guidelines, for the following models: 
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