MTBF beyond 3000 years: A snap hook for your plant

Failure of equipment on the plant floor can lead to considerable and costly disruption. For operators of power generation facilities, transport systems, chemical, pharmaceutical and other production plants, a continuous and reliable operation is of the utmost importance. Failures of components can put a halt to important processes, costing both money and time. Devices which rarely fail are critical to maximizing a plant’s uptime.

“Our products are reliable!” – Which manufacturer would not claim that about their products? But reliability is a quantifiable claim. Having hard data closely tied to when a failure can be expected, leads to good decision making about the quality of products being considered.

Probability of product failure stated

For our voltage transducers and signal conditioners, used worldwide in many large industrial facilities, the probability for failure is clearly stated in its documentation as MTBF information. Mean Time Between Failure, or MTBF, is defined as the statistical average of the time that elapses between two failure events.

When products have been used in relatively large quantities over a period of many years, MTBF figures can be calculated using the results seen in real operations. Many Knick Interface products have MTBF values that are calculated this way, due to the large installed base and extensive time seen in the field. Because we offer a five-year guarantee on all products, warranty claims can be used to help calculate the failure rate. As an example, using this method for the P27000 series of isolated universal signal conditioners, the MTBF calculation yields a figure beyond 3,000 years.**

Documents specific to reliability data

Quality Report P27000

Quality Report P40000

**MTBF values can also be calculated by theoretical methods, in accordance with EN 61709 and with component reliability values tied to SN29500. Again, coming back to our P27000 series, the MTBF value calculated by this method is 76 years. These theoretical figures are also shown in our product documentation.

by Steve Allard

General Manager at Knick Interface LLC, USA

Phone: +1 888 62 KNICK

www.knick-interface.com