Many people have heard of, or are familiar with various reliability prediction methods like MIL-HDBK-217, Telcordia SR332, etc. These standardized handbook methods have widespread use in industry. They are primarily applicable when making the assumption that the component failure rate is constant (at the bottom portion of the bathtub curve) and are thus generally applicable to most electronic components. However, caution should be taken when using these prediction methods because there may be components for which this assumption is not correct including some electronic parts like electrolytic capacitors. There are some handbooks that deal with mechanical parts but they also generally view the failure rates as constant for the time period of interest. In working with a client recently, …
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