Target Reliability Tool

Deciding on a reliability goal/target involves trade-offs. This is because higher reliability typically correlates with higher production costs, lower warranty costs and higher market share. With Weibull++'s Target Reliability tool, you can generate plots that help you visualize and estimate a target reliability that will minimize cost, maximize profit and/or maximize your return on an investment in improving the product’s reliability. The ReliaWiki resource portal has more information on the Target Reliability tool at: http://www.reliawiki.org/index.php/Target_Reliability_Tool.

The Target Reliability tool is divided into a target estimation sheet and control panel. The top part of the sheet is the Target Estimation Inputs area, where you provide the best, most likely and worst case estimates for various factors involved in the production and sale of the product. The bottom part of the sheet contains the plot that you select to generate from your inputs.

The control panel contains settings for the type of plot that will be displayed, as well as other plot settings and icons. It also contains an input field for the product's maximum market potential and, when the R3OI vs. reliability plot is selected, an input field for the expected initial investment.

Generating a Plot

Follow the steps outlined below to generate a plot.

Note: A better scenario involves an improvement in both reliability and ROI. Thus the production costs in the best case scenario must be higher than that of the worst case scenario. This is because improving reliability requires increasing spending on factors such as facilities, higher quality materials, etc.

Tip: You can hide the Target Estimation Inputs area and expand the plot to fill the entire sheet by double-clicking the plot. To show the area and shrink the plot to its original size, simply double-click the plot again. See the descriptions below for other plot commands that are available in this control panel.

Control Panel

The Target Reliability Tool control panel contains the following options:

Related Topics and Links