Prior Distributions Fitted to Observed Reliability Data

This paper describes methods of fitting prior distributions to equipment MTBF = θ, shows the priors fitted to different equipments, establishes data criteria for fitting prior distributions to θ, and presents the results of a robustness analysis performed on the fitted priors. Systematic procedures for fitting priors are shown for Type 1 data (number of failures in fixed time T) and Type 2 data (observed MTBF, number of failures not the same for all equipments), and specific data criteria, in the form of minimum values of n (number of equipments) and K (number of failures) are presented. The inverted-gamma prior-distributions were derived from operational failure data obtained from Tinker AFB. The equipments are primarily electronic, therefore, the time-to-failure distribution was assumed to be exponential; however, the methods are generally applicable whatever the form of the conditional distribution. The robustness analysis shows the effects of errors in estimating the parameters of the prior on the posterior distribution. In general, the effect of errors in estimating parameters of the prior was practically negligible for large values of K.