Perils and pitfalls of Weibull life-data analysis

Weibull analysis offers considerable insight into the lifetime reliability of products. This paper will describe and illustrate common pitfalls, together with suggestions for their avoidance and aims to provide practical guidance above and beyond standard texts, illustrated with key data and comparisons. This approach will offer significantly better results than either ignoring unfailed items, or automatically assuming high-life for each, beyond the longest failure time. Weibull analysis is a life-based approach to reliability, also useful for optimizing preventive maintenance and replacement intervals.