Reliability Analysis and Prediction With Warranty Data ─ Issues, Strategies, and Methods

Through simple, practical approaches, Reliability Analysis and Prediction with Warranty Data: Issues, Strategies, and Methods helps Six Sigma black belts and engineers successfully interpret warranty data to make accurate predictions. It discusses how to use this data to define and analyze field problems, provides guidelines for discovering the root causes for warranty cost reduction, and explores issues associated with warranty data and the approaches to overcome them.

The first part of the book presents an introduction to reliability analysis and prediction using warranty data and highlights the issues involved. The second section offers strategies and methods for obtaining component-level nonparametric hazard rate estimates that provide important clues toward probable root causes and that help reduce warranty costs. Focusing on the prediction of warranty performance, the final part deals with methodologies that assess the impact of changes in warranty limits and forecast warranty performance.

This user-friendly book shows how warranty data can support various levels of decision making to achieve reliable outcomes. Easily understood even for those with minimal statistical background, it includes objectives and summaries in each chapter to enable quick review of the topics.

Bharatendra K. Rai is an assistant professor in the Charlton College of Business at the University of Massachusetts, North Dartmouth. An ASQ Six Sigma black belt, Dr. Rai has a vast amount of consulting and training experiences in the automotive, electronics, food, pharmaceutical, software, chemical, and defense industries.

Nanua Singh is the president of Rapid Global Business Solutions, Inc., Madison Heights, Michigan. Dr. Singh was previously a professor at the India Institute of Technology, Delhi; head of the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Windsor, Canada; and professor of manufacturing engineering at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan.