Reliability assessment with amalgamated data via the expectation-maximization algorithm

A solution is given to the problem of estimating reliability indicators in a context of crude data arising in an industrial study devoted to the reliability assessment of electronic calculators used in modern airplanes. The authors introduce the concept of amalgamated data and develop an expectation-maximization algorithm to obtain a maximum likelihood estimator of the reliability function and the cumulative failure intensity associated with the lifetime of calculators.