• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.37 no.9
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• pp.1169-1174
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• 2013

Most products are indeed governed by multiple failure modes. However, there are few cases in which reliability analysis applies to only one failure mode at a time. Furthermore, reliability data do not include information about failure modes, or the reliability analysis is performed using a representative failure mode. The Weibull shape parameter for failure modes is more important than one for products in the reliability qualification test. This paper presents reliability analysis methods for a mechanical component with multiple failure modes. These methods include the competing failure modes (CFM) method and the mixed Weibull method. Pneumatic cylinder test data with three failure modes are presented to estimate the shape parameter for each separate failure mode. In addition, reliability measures (B10 life, characteristic life) of the pneumatic cylinder considering three failure modes were compared with those assuming a single failure mode.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.357-371
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• 2007

For the time-to-failure data with competing risks, cumulative incidence functions (CIFs) are commonly estimated using nonparametric methods. If the cases of events due to the cause of primary interest are infrequent relative to other cause of failure, nonparametric methods may result in rather imprecise estimates for CIF. In such cases, Bryant et al. (2004) suggested to model the cause-specific hazard of primary interest parametrically, while accounting for the other modes of failure using nonparametric estimator. We represented the semiparametric cumulative incidence estimator and extended to the model of Weibull and log-normal distribution. We also conducted simulations to access the performance of the semiparametric cumulative incidence estimators and to investigate the impact of model misspecification in log-normal cause-specific hazard model.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.22-31
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• 2008

The operating window method is a novel approach in quality improvement. But it has not received deserved attention in academic research. If a critical factor for competing failure modes can be identified, the probability of failure can be reduced by widening the operating window of this factor. Traditional SN ratio for the operating window advocated by Taguchi has a critical shortcoming, which has been derived under the assumption that failure rates are determined by the operating window factor only. A new metric for robustness is given for the operating window method, which has relaxed the restrictive assumption of Taguchi's SN ratio. And procedures for determining optimal conditions based on the new metric is presented. The effectiveness of the proposed approach over the traditional practice is tested with the aid of a wave soldering process.