Reliability analyses and risk assessment techniques in nonparametric applications

Reliability and risk assessment play an important role in product design, development and production. In mass production items, data is abundant and testing in product development and certification is usually thorough. In contrast, for nonparametric applications, product cost is high, there is limited production and the product is often used only once and discarded. In this type of manufacturing, data is usually limited because of the cost of testing. This makes reliability and risk assessments a difficult task. To circumvent this shortfall in data and its analysis, it is the intent of this paper to provide an alternative approach to models for reliability and risk analysis. This was accomplished by first surveying existing literature and models; then, approaching the problem with a set of block diagrams for each of the required analyses. Additionally, a full set of current models and failure analysis tools were also incorporated. With these tools the proposed methodology was demonstrated in case studies. These studies provided the validation for the methodology presented.