Customer oriented reliability indices and data collection

There is a lot of discussion today on improving reliability in customer service. There are partially standardized methods and calculations for calculating reliability indices. Reliability analysis that identifies the real problem areas is what is important so effective action can be taken to improve customer service. The reliability analysis begins with selection of reliability measures that actually reflect the needs of your customers. This is followed by data collection and reduction. Data collection can be lengthy and complicated. It should be simple and understandable. This paper develops the reasoning for the selection of relevant indices that are important to a given cooperative. It then discusses the data that must be gathered to compute those indices and how to use the data collected.