On importance of reliability data collection for failure rate modeling: Reliability active Data Base RADB

Nowadays reliability and availability of production facilities have a great relevance for business economic results. During last years a lot of studies regarding a lot of interesting issues have been carried out, for example in methods to increase plants availability, in preventive maintenance policies, in data teleprocessing and in general to boost the effectiveness and the cheapness of production. However all these research activities started from reliability data, and in particular from failure rate knowledge. Not always these starting data are careful. This paper describes a set of problems linked to a poor interpretation of failure rate of a component and suggests a data collection based on Reliability "Active" Data Base (RADB). A framework of a RADB, tested in different real applications, is presented. Finally future developments toward teleprocessing and remote data entry of maintenance information are presented.