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Repairable Systems Reliability

Analysis: A Comprehensive Framework


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Repairable Systems
Reliability Analysis
Repairable Systems
Reliability Analysis

A Comprehensive Framework

Rajiv Nandan Rai


Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India

Sanjay Kumar Chaturvedi


Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India

Nomesh Bolia
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Delhi, India
This edition first published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA
and Scrivener Publishing LLC, 100 Cummings Center, Suite 541J, Beverly, MA 01915, USA
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN 978-1-119-52627-8

Cover image: Stockvault.Com


Cover design by Russell Richardson

Set in size of 11pt and Minion Pro by Manila Typesetting Company, Makati, Philippines

Printed in the USA

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents

Series Editor Preface ix


Preface xi
List of Tables xv
List of Figures xix
1 Introduction to Repairable Systems 1
1.1 Introduction 1
1.2 Perfect, Minimal, and Imperfect Repairs 4
1.3 Summary 7
References 8
2 Repairable Systems Reliability Analysis: Non-Parametric 9
2.1 Introduction 9
2.2 Mean Cumulative Function 11
2.3 Construction of MCF Plot and Confidence Bounds:
Exact Age Data 14
2.3.1 MCF Construction: Exact Age Data 14
2.3.2 Confidence Bounds on MCF: Exact Age Data 20
2.3.3 Construction of MCF Plot and Confidence Bounds:
Grouped Data 22
2.3.4 Confidence Bounds on MCF: Grouped Data 22
2.4 Case Study: ROV System 23
2.5 Interval Age Analysis 27
2.5.1 MCF With All Types of Failure Modes Combined 27
2.5.2 MCF for Individual Failure Modes 33
2.5.3 Exact Age Analysis 33
2.6 Summary and Conclusion 40
References 41

v
vi Contents

3 Repairable Systems Reliability Analysis: Parametric 43


3.1 Introduction 43
3.2 Basic Terminologies 43
3.3 Parametric Analysis Approaches 46
3.3.1 Renewal Process 46
3.3.2 Non-Homogeneous Poisson Process (NHPP) 47
3.3.3 Generalized Renewal Process (GRP) 54
3.3.3.1 ARA Models 54
3.3.3.2 Kijima-I Model 56
3.3.3.3 Kijima-II Model 63
3.3.3.4 Virtual Age–Based Reliability Metrics 72
3.3.4 Summary 77
References 78
Further Reading 79
ARI Models 79
4 Goodness-of-Fit Tests for Repairable Systems 83
4.1 Introduction 83
4.2 Mann’s Test for the Weibull Distribution 84
4.3 Laplace Trend Test 86
4.4 GOF Models for Power Law Process 87
4.4.1 Crow/AMSAA Test 87
4.4.2 Common Beta Hypothesis (CBH) Tests 88
4.4.3 CVM Test 90
4.5 GOF Model for GRP Based on Kijima-I Model 92
4.6 Summary 94
References 95
5 Maintenance Modeling in Repairable Systems 97
5.1 Introduction to Maintenance Policies Using Kijima
Virtual Age Model 97
5.2 Need for HFRC Threshold 98
5.3 Reliability-Based Methodology for Optimal Maintenance
Policies in MA 100
5.3.1 Reliability-Based Threshold Model for HFRC 100
5.3.1.1 Review of Present Maintenance Policy for
HFRCs 102
5.4 Availability-Based HFRC Analysis 107
5.4.1 Availability-Based Criteria for HFRC (BB Approach) 107
5.4.1.1 Review of Overhaul Cycle (BB Approach) 109
5.4.2 Availability-Based HFRC Threshold Model
Considering FMs 112
Contents vii

5.4.2.1 Maintenance Strategy for HFRCs With FM


Approach 115
5.4.2.2 TBO Model Considering FMs 115
5.5 Summary 120
References 122
6 FMEA for Repairable Systems Based on Repair
Effectiveness Index 125
6.1 Introduction 125
6.2 A Brief Overview on Performing FMEA 128
6.2.1 System Definition 129
6.2.2 Identification of Failure Modes 129
6.2.3 Determination of Cause 130
6.2.4 Assessment of Effect 130
6.2.5 Classification of Severity (S) 131
6.2.6 Estimation of Probability of Occurrence (O) 131
6.2.7 Detection 132
6.2.8 Computation of Conventional RPN 132
6.2.9 Determination of Corrective Action 132
6.3 Estimating RPNs Through the Modified Approach [15] 133
6.4 Corrective Actions 135
6.5 Summary 140
References 140
7 An Integrated Approach to Weapon Procurement Systems 143
7.1 Introduction 143
7.2 Analytic Network Process Model 147
7.3 AP Index and AP Value Estimation 151
7.3.1 Analytic Hierarchy Process Model 151
7.3.2 AP Index Estimation 151
7.3.3 Sample AP Index Estimation 152
7.3.4 AP Value Estimation 154
7.4 Formation of an ACU 160
7.4.1 Attack Model 160
7.4.2 Defense Model 161
7.4.3 Illustrative Example 162
7.5 Summary 164
References 166
8 Throughput Analysis of the Overhaul Line of a Repair Depot 169
8.1 Introduction 169
8.2 Basic Definitions, Parameters, and Relationships 173
viii Contents

8.3 Variability 174


8.3.1 Measures and Classes of Variability 174
8.3.2 Causes of Variability 175
8.3.3 Variability from Preemptive Outages (Breakdowns) 175
8.3.4 Variability in Flows 176
8.3.5 Variability Interactions Queuing 177
8.3.5.1 The M/M/1 Queue 177
8.3.5.2 The G/G/1 Queue 178
8.4 Process Batching 178
8.5 System Flow and Parameters 179
8.6 System Analysis and Discussion 181
8.6.1 Component 1: LPCR Blades 181
8.6.2 Component 2: CCOC 188
8.6.3 Component 3: LPTR Blades 190
8.7 Summary 192
References 193
Appendix A 195
The Saaty Rating Scale 195
Pairwise Comparisons and Estimation of Weights for ANP 196
Appendix B 257
Unweighted Super-Matrix (Part 1) 258
Unweighted Super-Matrix (Part 2) 265
Weighted Super-Matrix (Part 1) 273
Weighted Super-Matrix (Part 2) 280
Limit Super-Matrix (Part 1) 288
Limit Super-Matrix (Part 2) 295
Appendix C 303
Pairwise Comparisons and Estimation of Weights for AHP 304
Appendix D 339
F Distribution Table 339
Appendix E 347
Normal Distribution Table 347
Appendix F 353
Chi Square Table 353
Appendix G 363
Critical Values for Cramér-von Mises Test 363
Index 365
Series Editor Preface

This is the 10th book in the series on performability engineering since


the series was launched in 2014. The subject of this book is special as not
many books on Repairable System Reliability are available in the literature
on reliability engineering. All the three authors of this book come from
the reputed academic institutes of technology in India, but have also have
had rich experience of working on field projects of practical importance.
Incidentally, the two of the authors, namely, Rajiv Nandan Rai and Sanjay
Kumar Chaturvedi are the postgraduate and doctorate, respectively, of the
first Centre of Reliability Engineering established in India by the series
Editor in 1983 at the Indian institute of Technology, at Kharagpur. Rajiv
Nandan Rai has also served with the Indian Air Force and has had about
20 years of industrial experience in military aviation, which is reflected in
the treatment of the subject.
Actually, the research in repairable systems reliability is limited and very
few textbooks are available on the subject. The available textbooks gener-
ally provide coverage of non-homogeneous Poisson process (NHPP) where
the repair effectiveness index (REI) is considered one. Few more textbooks
provide treatment of non-parametric reliability analysis of repairable sys-
tems. However, this book aims to provide a comprehensive framework for
the analysis of repairable systems considering both the non-parametric
and parametric estimation of the failure data. The book also provides dis-
cussion of generalized renewal process (GRP) based arithmetic reduction
of age (ARA) models along with its applications to repairable systems data
from aviation industry.
Repair actions in military aviation may not fall under ‘as good as new
(AGAN)’ and ‘as bad as old (ABAO)’ assumptions which often find lim-
ited uses in practical applications. But actual situation could lie somewhere
between the two. A repairable system may end up in one of the five likely
states subsequent to a repair: (i) as good as new, (ii) as bad as old, (iii) better
than old but worse than new, (iv) better than new, and lastly, (v) worse than
old. Existing probabilistic models used in repairable system analysis, such

ix
x Series Editor Preface

as the perfect renewal process (PRP) and the non-homogeneous Poisson


process (NHPP), account for the first two states. In the concept of imper-
fect repair, the repair actions are unable to bring the system to as good as
new state, but can transit to a stage that is somewhere between new and
that of one preceding to a failure. Because of the requirement to have more
precise analyses and predictions, the GRP can be of great interest to reduce
the modelling ambiguity resulting from the above repair assumptions. The
authors have discussed to a great extent various possibilities under repair-
ability environment and applied them to physical systems. The book also
summarizes the models and approaches available in the literature on the
analysis of repairable system reliability.
It is expected the book will be very useful to all those who are designing
or maintaining repairable systems.

Krishna B. Misra
Series Editor
Preface

Conventionally, a repair action usually is assumed to renew a system to its


“as good as new” condition. This assumption is very unrealistic for proba-
bilistic modeling and leads to major distortions in statistical analysis. Most
of the reliability literature is directed toward non-repairable systems, that
is, systems that fail are discarded. This book is mainly dedicated toward
providing coverage to the reliability modeling and analysis of repairable
systems that are repaired and not replaced when they fail.
During his journey in the military organization, the first author real-
ized that most of the industries desire to equip its scientists, engineers, and
managers with the knowledge of reliability concepts and applications but
have not been able to succeed completely. Repairable systems reliability
analysis is an area where the research work is quite limited and very few
text books are available. The available text books are also limited in provid-
ing a coverage only up to the concepts of non-homogeneous Poisson pro-
cess (NHPP) where the repair effectiveness index (REI) is considered one.
Few more textbooks provide knowledge only on non-parametric reliability
analysis on repairable systems.
This book provides a comprehensive framework for the modeling and
analysis of repairable systems considering both the non-parametric and
parametric estimation of the failure data. The book provides due expo-
sure to the generalized renewal process (GRP)–based arithmetic reduc-
tion of age (ARA) models along with its applications to repairable systems
data from aviation industry. The book also covers various multi-criteria
decision making (MCDM) techniques, integrated with repairable systems
reliability analysis models to provide a much better insight into imperfect
repair and maintenance data analysis. A complete chapter on an integrated
framework for procurement process is added which will of a great assis-
tance to the readers in enhancing the potential of their respective orga-
nization. It is intended to be useful for senior undergraduate, graduate,
and post-­graduate students in engineering schools as also for professional
engineers, reliability administrators, and managers.

xi
xii Preface

This book has primarily emerged from the industrial experience and
research work of the authors. A number of illustrations have been included
to make the subject pellucid and vivid even to the readers who are new to
this area. Besides, various examples have been provided to showcase the
applicability of presented models and methodologies, besides, to assist the
readers in applying the concepts presented in the book.
The concepts of random variable and commonly used discrete and con-
tinuous probability distributions can readily be seen in various available
texts that deal with reliability analysis of non-reparable systems. The reli-
ability literature is in plenty to cover such aspects in reliability data anal-
ysis where the failure times are modeled by appropriate life distributions.
Hence, the readers are advised to refer to any such text book on non-­
repairable systems reliability analysis for a better comprehension of this
book.
Chapter 1 presents various terminologies pertaining to repairable sys-
tems followed by the description of repair concepts and repair categories.
The mean cumulative function (MCF)–based graphical and non-­
parametric methods for reparable systems are simple yet powerful option
available to analyze the fleet/system events recurrence behavior and their
recurrence rate. Chapter 2 is dedicated to MCF-based non-parametric
analysis through examples with a case study of remotely operated vehicle
(ROV).
The renewal and homogeneous Poisson processes (HPPs) followed by
an exhaustive description of NHPP are covered in Chapter 3 along with
solved examples. Thereafter, the chapter brings out a detailed description
of ARA and ARI models along with their applicability in maintenance.
The chapter also derives the maximum likelihood estimators (MLEs) for
Kijima virtual age models with the help of GRP. The models are demon-
strated with the help of suitable examples.
Chapter 4 provides various goodness-of-fit (GOF) tests for repairable
systems and their applications with examples.
Chapter 5 presents various reliability and availability-based maintenance
models for repairable systems. This chapter introduces the concept of high
failure rate component (HFRC)–based thresholds and provides maintenance
models by considering the “Black Box” (BB) approach followed by the failure
mode (FM) approach. All the models are well-supported with examples.
This book presents modified failure modes and analysis (FMEA) model
in Chapter 6. This model is based on the concept of REI propounded by
Kijima and is best applicable to the repairable systems reliability analysis.
Chapter 7 provides an integrated approach for weapon procurement
systems for military aviation. The combined applications of MCDM tools
Preface xiii

like AHP, ANP, and optimization techniques can be seen in this chapter.
This model can be used for other industries procurement policy as well.
Chapter 8 is aimed at reducing the overhaul time of a repairable equip-
ment to enhance the availability. Various concepts of throughput analysis
have been utilized in this chapter.
The book makes an honest attempt to provide a comprehensive coverage
to various models and methodologies that can be used for modeling and
analysis of repairable systems reliability analysis. However, there is always
a scope for improvement and we are looking forward to receiving critical
reviews and/or comments of the book from students, teachers, and practi-
tioners. We hope that the readers will all gain as much knowledge, under-
standing, and pleasure from reading this book as we have from writing it.

Rajiv Nandan Rai


Sanjay Kumar Chaturvedi
Nomesh Bolia
August 2020
List of Tables

Table 2.1 Rotating machine failure data of Example 2.2 16


Table 2.2 MCF and confidence calculations 17
Table 2.3 Example 2.3—Burn-in period determination 19
Table 2.4 Data for Example 2.4 24
Table 2.5 List of failure categories and counts for all 53 ROVs 28
Table 2.6 Failure Counts in Months Corresponding their
Failure Modes 29
Table 2.7 MCF calculation by combining all failure modes 31
Table 2.8 MCF calculation for individual category at 24 months 34
Table 2.9 A sample of collected data 36
Table 2.10 Exercise 1: Failure data of three systems 39
Table 3.1 Time to failure data (hours) of aero engines of Example 3.2 52
Table 3.2 Virtual age–based reliability metrics 73
Table 3.3 Time to failure data (hours) of Example 3.4 75
Table 3.4 Time to failure data (hours) of Example 3.5 76
Table 3.5 Time between failures for a compressor 78
Table 4.1 Hypothesis tests 84
Table 5.1 Maintenance modeling in repairable systems 99
Table 5.2 Relative outcome of the two overhaul cycles 104
Table 5.3 Relative outcome of the two overhaul cycles 106
Table 5.4 Comparative results of both overhaul cycles (Variant 1) 111

xv
xvi List of Tables

Table 5.5 Comparative results of both overhaul cycles (Variant 2) 112


Table 5.6 Results-failure mode wise for first overhaul cycle 118
Table 5.7 Results-failure mode wise for t2OH 119
Table 5.8 Failure mode wise percent improvement 119
Table 5.9 Comparative results of both overhaul cycles for the
aero engine 119
Table 6.1 Extensions to standard FMEA 127
Table 6.2 Failure cause-mode effect relationship 130
Table 6.3 Severity rating 131
Table 6.4 Occurrence rating 132
Table 6.5 Failure mode wise initial RPN 135
Table 6.6 Failure mode wise values of final Q 137
Table 6.7 Final RPNs 138
Table 6.8 FM1 138
Table 6.9 FM2 138
Table 6.10 FM3 139
Table 6.11 Comparative results 139
Table 7.1 Brief literature review on WSCE using MCDM 145
Table 7.2 Weights for API 153
Table 7.3 Actual and scaled API values of each weapon category 154
Table 7.4 APV estimation of combat force “ALPHA” 156
Table 7.5 APV enhancement 159
Table 7.6 APIij values 162
Table 7.7 Cij (million USD), ai, di, and mi 163
Table 7.8 Aij values 164
Table 7.9 Optimal xij values 165
Table 8.1 Brief literature review on TH analysis 171
Table 8.2 Required TH of the three components 180
List of Tables xvii

Table 8.3 Process requirements of LPCR blades repair 180


Table 8.4 Process requirements of CCOC repair 182
Table 8.5 Process requirements of LPTR blades repair 184
Table 8.6 Component 1—LPCR blades 185
Table 8.7 Component 2—CCOC 189
Table 8.8 Component 3—LPTR blades 191
List of Figures

Figure 1.1 Types of repair 5


Figure 1.2 Various techniques for reliability analysis 6
Figure 2.1 A MCF example 11
Figure 2.2 An improving system 12
Figure 2.3 A stable system 13
Figure 2.4 A deteriorating system 13
Figure 2.5 History and distribution of failures observed at age t 14
Figure 2.6 MCF plot of Example 2.2 17
Figure 2.7 Graphical plots of Example 2.3 20
Figure 2.8 MCF with confidence bounds of Example 2.2 data 21
Figure 2.9 MCF plot of Example 2.4 26
Figure 2.10 A ROV. (Image taken from: https://www.pinterest.com/
pin/55267618549 5210644/?nic=1) 26
Figure 2.11 MCF by combining all failure modes 33
Figure 2.12 Event plot for each system 34
Figure 2.13 MCF plot of each system 35
Figure 2.14 Grouping of systems based on performance behavior 35
Figure 2.15 Event plot of all three groups 38
Figure 2.16 MCF plot of all three groups 39
Figure 3.1 Bathtub-shaped intensity function 46
Figure 3.2 Conditional probability of occurrence of failures 48

xix
xx List of Figures

Figure 3.3 Photograph of an aero engine 51


Figure 3.4 Intensity function plot for Example 3.1 52
Figure 3.5 Intensity function plot for Example 3.2 53
Figure 3.6 Intensity function plot for Example 3.3 74
Figure 3.7 Availability plot for Example 3.3 75
Figure 5.1 Reliability-based HFRC threshold 102
Figure 5.2 Availability-based threshold for HFRC 108
Figure 5.3 Flying task vs. availability 109
Figure 6.1 q vs. F(vi | vi–1) for FM1 136
Figure 6.2 q vs. F(vi | vi–1) for FM2 137
Figure 6.3 q vs. F(vi | vi–1) for FM3 137
Figure 7.1 Overview of the approach 144
Figure 7.2 Evaluation of alternatives through ANP 148
Figure 7.3 Evaluation of APE through AHP 152
Figure 8.1 Overview of Chapter 8 170
Figure 8.2 Propagation of variability between workstations in series 177
Figure 8.3 Work flow/work stations for engine overhaul line 179
Figure 8.4 Work flow/work stations for LPCR blades 180
Figure 8.5 Work flow/work stations for CCOC 181
Figure 8.6 Work flow/work stations for LPTR blades repair 184
1
Introduction to Repairable Systems

1.1 Introduction
A system is a collection of mutually related items, assembled to perform
one or more intended functions. Any system majorly consists of (i) items
as the operating parts, (ii) attributes as the properties of items, and (iii)
the link between items and attributes as interrelationships. A system is
not only expected to perform its specified function(s) under its operating
conditions and constraints but also expected to meet specified require-
ments, referred as performance and attributes. The system exhibits certain
behavioural pattern that can never ever be exhibited by any of its constit-
uent items or their subsets. The items of a system may themselves be sys-
tems, and every system may be part of a larger system in a hierarchy. Each
system has a purpose for which items, attributes, and relationships have
been organized. Everything else that remains outside the boundaries of
system is considered as environment from where a system receives input
(in the form of material, energy, and/or information) and makes output
to the environment which might be in different form as that of the input
it had received. Internally, the items communicate through input and
output wherein output(s) of one items(s) becomes the input(s) to others.
The inherent ability of an item/system to perform required function(s)
with specified performance and attributes when it is utilized as specified
is known as functionability [1]. This definition differentiates between the
terms functionality and functionability where former is purely related to
the function performed whereas latter also takes into considerations the
level of performance achieved.
Despite the system is functionable at the beginning of its operational life,
we are fully aware that even after using the perfect design, best technology
available for its production or the materials from which it is made, certain
irreversible changes are bound to occur due to the actions of various inter-
acting and superimposing processes, such as corrosion, deformations, dis-
tortions, overheating, fatigue, or similar. These interacting processes are the

Rajiv Nandan Rai, Sanjay Kumar Chaturvedi and Nomesh Bolia. Repairable Systems Reliability
Analysis: A Comprehensive Framework, (1–8) © 2020 Scrivener Publishing LLC

1
2 Repairable Systems Reliability Analysis

main reason behind the change in the output characteristics of the system.
The deviation of these characteristics from the specifications constitutes a
failure. The failure of a system, therefore, can be defined as an event whose
occurrence results in either loss of ability to perform required function(s) or
loss of ability to satisfy the specified requirements (i.e., performance and/or
attributes). Regardless of the reason of occurrence of this change, a failure
causes system to transit from a state of functioning to a state of failure or state
of unacceptable performance. For many systems, a transition to the unsat-
isfactory or failure state means retirement. Engineering systems of this type
are known as non-maintained or non-reparable system because it is impos-
sible to restore their functionability within reasonable time, means, and
resources. For example, a missile is a non-repairable system once launched.
Other examples of non-repairable systems include electric bulbs, batteries,
transistors, etc. However, there are a large number of systems whose func-
tionability can be restored by effecting certain specified tasks known as
maintenance tasks. These tasks can be as complex as necessitating a complete
overhaul or as simple as just cleaning, replacement, or adjustment. One can
cite several examples of repairable systems one’s own day-to-day interactions
with such systems that include but not limited to automobiles, computers,
aircrafts, industrial machineries, etc. For instance, a laptop, not connected
to an electrical power supply, may fail to start if its battery is dead. In this
case, replacing the battery—a non-maintained item—with a new one may
solve the problem. A television set is another example of a repairable sys-
tem, which upon failure can be restored to satisfactory condition by simply
replacing either the failed resistor or transistor or even a circuit board if that
is the cause, or by adjusting the sweep or synchronization settings.
The system, in fact, wavers and stays between satisfactory and unsatis-
factory states during its operational life until a decision is taken to dispense
with it. The proportion of the time, during which the system is function-
able, depends on the interaction between the inherent characteristics of a
system from the design and utilization function given by the users’ specific
requirements and actions. The prominent inherent characteristics could
be reliability, maintainability, and supportability. Note that these charac-
teristics are directly related to the frequency of failures, the complexity of a
maintenance task, and ease to support that task. The utilization character-
istics are driven by the users’ operational scenarios and maintenance pol-
icy adopted, which are further supported by the logistics functions, which
is related to the provisioning of operational and maintenance resources
needed. In short, the pattern followed by an engineering system can be
termed as funtionability profile whose specific shape is governed by the
inherent characteristics of design and system’s utilization. The metric
Introduction to Repairable Systems 3

Availability or its variants quantitatively summarize the functionability


profile of an item/system. It is an extremely important and useful measure
for reparable systems; besides, a technical aid in the cases where user is to
make decisions regarding the acquisition of one item among several com-
peting possibilities with differing values of reliability, maintainability, and
supportability. Functionability and availability brought together indicates
how good a system is. It is referred as system technical effectiveness repre-
senting the inherent capability of the system. Clearly, the biggest opportu-
nity to make an impact on systems’ characteristics is at the design stage to
won or lost the battle when changes and modifications are possible almost
at negligible efforts. Therefore, the biggest challenge for engineers, scien-
tists, and researchers has been to assess the impact of the design on the
maintenance process at the earliest stage of the design through field expe-
riences, analysis, planning and management. And, the repairable system
analysis is not just constricted on finding out the reliability metrics.
Most complex systems, such as automobiles, communication systems,
aircraft, engine controllers, printers, medical diagnostics systems, helicop-
ters, train locomotives, and so on so forth are repaired once they fail. In
fact, when a system enters into utilization process, it is exposed to three dif-
ferent performance influencing factors, viz., operation, maintenance, and
logistics, which should be strategically managed in accordance with the
business plans of the owners. It is often of considerable interest to deter-
mine the reliability and other performance characteristics under these
conditions. Areas of interest may include assessing the expected number of
failures during the warranty period, maintaining a minimum reliability for
an interval, addressing the rate of wear out, determining when to replace
or overhaul a system, and minimizing its life cycle costs.
Traditional reliability life or accelerated test data analysis—nonpara-
metric or parametric—is based on a truly random sample drawn from
a single population and independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.)
assumptions on the reliability data obtained from the testing/fielded units.
This i.i.d. assumption may also be valid, intuitively, on the first failure of
several identical units, coming from the same design and manufacturing
process, fielded in a specified or assumed to be in an identical environ-
ment. Life data of such items usually consists of an item’s single failure (or
very first failure for reparable items) times with some items may be still
surviving-referred as censoring or suspension. The reliability literature is
in plenty to cover such aspects in reliability data analysis where the failure
times are modeled by appropriate life distributions [2].
However, in repairable system, one generally has times of successive
failures of a single system, often violating the i.i.d assumption. Hence, it is
4 Repairable Systems Reliability Analysis

not surprising that statistical methods required for repairable system differ
from those needed in reliability analysis of non-repairable items. In order to
address the reliability characteristics of complex repairable systems, a process
rather than a distribution is often used. For a repairable system, time to next
failure depends on both the life distribution (the probability distribution of
the time to first failure) and the impact of maintenance actions performed
after the first occurrence of a failure. The most popular process model is the
Power Law Process (PLP). This model is popular for several reasons. For
instance, it has a very practical foundation in terms of minimal repair—a
situation when the repair of a failed system is just enough to get the system
operational again by repair or replacement of its constituent item(s). Second,
if the time to first failure follows the Weibull distribution, then the Power
Law model repair governs each succeeding failure and adequately models
the minimal repair phenomenon. In other words, the Weibull distribution
addresses the very first failure and the PLP addresses each succeeding failure
for a repairable system. From this viewpoint, the PLP can be regarded as an
extension of the Weibull distribution and a generalization of Poisson process.
Besides, the PLP is generally computationally easy in providing useful and
practical solutions, which have been usually comprehended and accepted by
the management for many real-world applications.
The usual notion and assumption of overhauling of a system is to bring-
ing it back to “as-good-as-new” (AGAN) condition. This notion may not
be true in practice and an overhaul may not achieve the system reliability
back to where it was when the system was new. However, there is con-
currence among all the stakeholders that an overhaul indeed makes the
system more reliable than just before its overhaul. For systems that are not
overhauled, there is only one cycle and we are interested in the reliability
characteristics of such systems as the system ages during its operational
life. For systems that are overhauled several times during their lifetime, our
interest would be in the reliability characteristics of the system as it ages
during its cycles, i.e., the age of the system starts from the beginning of the
cycle and each cycle starts with a new zero time.

1.2 Perfect, Minimal, and Imperfect Repairs


As discussed earlier, a repairable system is a system that is restored to its
functionable state after the loss of functionability by the actions other than
replacement of the entire system. The quantum of repair depends upon var-
ious factors like criticality of the component failed, operational status of the
system, risk index, etc. Accordingly, the management takes a decision on
Introduction to Repairable Systems 5

how much repair a system has to undergo. The two extremes of the repair
are perfect and minimal repairs. A system is said to be perfectly repaired, if
the system is restored to AGAN condition (as it is replaced with a new one).
Normally, a perfect repair in terms of the replacement is carried out for very
critical components, which may compromise operation ability, safety of the
system, and/or personnel working with the system. On the other hand, a
system is said to be minimally repaired, if its working state is restored to
“as-bad-as-old” (ABAO). This type of repair is undertaken when there is
heavy demand for the system to work for a finite time or the system will be
undergoing preventive maintenance shortly or will be scrapped soon.
Any repair other than perfect and minimal repair comes under imper-
fect repair. Most of the repairs observed in day-to-day systems are imper-
fect repairs, i.e., a system is neither restored to AGAN conditions nor to
ABAO conditions. The three types of repairs are pictorially represented in
Figure 1.1.

Perfect repair
1
Degradation

0.5

0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Time

Minimal repair
1
Degradation

0.5

0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Time

General repair
1
Degradation

0.5

0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Time

Figure 1.1 Types of repair.


6 Repairable Systems Reliability Analysis

It can be seen from Figure 1.1 that in case of perfect repair, the system
is rendered “AGAN” and the life starts at zero in the time scale signifying
that the performance degradation is completely restored. In case of mini-
mal repair, after the system is subjected to a repair action, its age remains
same as before the repair action and there is no restoration of life below
the previous age. So far the general repair is concerned, some of its life is
renewed and the system starts functioning after being restored to some-
where between “ABAO” and “AGAN” state.
Figure 1.2 summarizes the techniques in vogue for reliability analysis
for both repairable and non-repairable items, respectively.

Failure Data
Analysis

Live Data Analysis Recurrent Event Data Analysis


(For Non-Repairable Items) (For repairable Items)

Non- Non-Parametric Parametric


Parametric Parametric Analysis
Analysis
Analysis Distributional
Analysis

Kaplan-Meier Normal Mean Perfect Renewal


Estimator Distribution Cumulative Process (PRP)
Function (MCF)

Median Rank Exponential


Estimator Distribution General Renewal
Process (GRP)

Weibull
Distribution
Non-Homogenous
Poisson Process
(NHPP)

Other
Distribution

Figure 1.2 Various techniques for reliability analysis.


Introduction to Repairable Systems 7

A renewal process (RP) is a counting process where the inter-occurrence


times are stochastically i.i.d. with an arbitrary life distribution. Under the
RP, a single distribution can characterize the time between failures (TBF),
and the frequency of repair appears constant. The non-renewal behav-
ior occurs if this frequency of repairs increases (deteriorating systems)
or decreases (system improving) influencing the corresponding mainte-
nance costs. The homogeneous Poisson process (HPP) describes a sequence
of statistically i.i.d. exponential random variables. Conversely, a non-
homogeneous Poisson process (NHPP) [3, 4] describes a sequence of ran-
dom variables that are neither statistically independent nor identically
distributed. The NHPP is often used to model repairable systems that are
subject to minimal repair. The generalized renewal process (GRP) allows
the goodness of repairs within two extremities, viz., AGAN repair (RP) to
the same-as-old repair (NHPP). The GRP is particularly useful in model-
ing the failure behavior of a specific unit and understanding the effects of
repair actions on the age of that system. An example of a system to which
the GRP is especially applicable is a system, which is repaired after a fail-
ure and whose repair neither brings the system to an AGAN or an ABAO
condition, but instead partially rejuvenates the system. Therefore, one
should be cautious on the fact that without looking at the actual behavior
of the data may lead to underestimation or overestimation of engineering
metrics.
The analysis by employing the parametric methods on scenarios of
failure-repair requires a certain degree of statistical knowledge, the abil-
ity to solve complex equations and verification of distributional assump-
tions. Further, these equations cannot be solved analytically and require
an iterative procedure or special software. Besides, parametric approaches
are computationally intensive and not intuitive to a novice or an average
person. The analysis of events, irrespective of the nature of the system-
reparable or not reparable, should take an analysis path from non-
parametric to versatile parametric model with graphical analysis being a
common denominator. Undoubtedly, the choice of method depends on
the data available and the questions we wish to answer.

1.3 Summary
A repairable system is a system that is restored to its functionable state
after the loss of functionability by the actions other than replacement of
the entire system. The two extremes of the repair are perfect and minimal
repairs. A system is said to be perfectly repaired, if the system is restored
8 Repairable Systems Reliability Analysis

to AGAN condition (as it is replaced with a new one). On the other hand,
a system is said to be minimally repaired, if its working state is restored
to ABAO. Any repair other than perfect and minimal repair comes under
imperfect repair. Most of the repairs observed in day-to-day systems are
imperfect repairs, i.e., a system is neither restored to AGAN conditions
nor to ABAO conditions. The RP is used to model AGAN condition. The
NHPP is often used to model repairable systems that are subject to mini-
mal repair. The GRP allows the goodness of repairs within two extremities,
viz., AGAN repair (RP) to the same-as-old repair (NHPP).
The next chapter describes the mean cumulative function (MCF) based
graphical and non-parametric methods for repairable systems.

References
1. Knezevic, J., Systems Maintainability, Analysis, Engineering and Management,
Chapman and Hall, London, 1997.
2. Ebeling, C.E., An Introduction to Reliability and Maintainability Engineering,
McGraw Hill, New York, 2007.
3. Rigdon, S.E. and Basu, A.P., Statistical Methods for the Reliability of Repairable
Systems, Wiley, New York, 2000.
4. Ascher, H. and Feingold, H., Repairable Systems Reliability, Marcel Dekker,
New York, 1984.
2
Repairable Systems Reliability
Analysis: Non-Parametric

2.1 Introduction
Many products experience repeated repairs that requires special statistical
treatment with respect to formulating methods and models for analysis.
The items are usually considered statistically independent, but the times
between the occurrences of failure or repair events within a system unit
are neither necessarily independent nor identically distributed. The data
are usually censored in the sense that system units have different ends
of operational histories. A distributional analysis might also be possible
for the systems’ which undergo a series of failure/repair cycles, on their
very first observed failure or if their times-between-failures (TBF) show
no trends. However, if a series of multiple failure or repair events, occur-
ring sequentially in time continuum, are to be considered for analysis then
order of the failure event’s occurrence does matter and ignorance would
lead to incorrect analysis and decisions thereof [1, 2]. Since the collec-
tion of random variables involved in such systems evolve with time, their
behavior is generally modeled through a process rather than a distribution.
In reliability engineering, the systems under this category are commonly
referred as repairable systems, i.e., systems that are brought to their normal
functionable states by means of any minor or major maintenance action(s).
Therefore, when assessing and analyzing the system reliability, it is always
important to make the distinction between non-repairable components
and repairable systems to select an appropriate approach.
For a company or for a competing manufacturer, the common concerns
can be [3, 4]:

• The number of repairs, on average, for all system at a speci-


fied operational time?
• Expected time to first repair, subsequent repairs, etc.

Rajiv Nandan Rai, Sanjay Kumar Chaturvedi and Nomesh Bolia. Repairable Systems Reliability
Analysis: A Comprehensive Framework, (9–42) © 2020 Scrivener Publishing LLC

9
10 Repairable Systems Reliability Analysis

• Trends in repair rate or costs whether increasing, decreas-


ing, or substantially constant.
• How to take decisions on burn-in requirements and mainte-
nance or retirement.
• Is burn-in would be beneficial? How long and costs effective
it would be?
• How to compare different versions, designs, or perfor-
mance of systems operating in different environment/
regions, etc.

Each of the above questions and many more can be answered by the
method presented in this chapter. This chapter describes mean cumula-
tive function (MCF) based non-parametric graphical approach—a sim-
ple yet powerful and informative model—to deal with failure events of
systems undergoing a failure and repair cycles wherein the time to effect
a repair is assumed to be negligible. This is a reasonable assumption with
respect to the operational times of a unit that are usually long than its
repair times.
The MCF approach is simple as it is easy to understand, prepare, and
present the data. The MCF model is non-parametric in the sense that its
estimation involves no assumptions about the form of the mean function
or the process generating the system histories. Further, this graphical
method allows the monitoring of system recurrences and the mainte-
nance of statistical rigidity without resorting to complex stochastic
techniques.
Further, the non-parametric MCF analysis provides similar infor-
mation as probability plots in a traditional life data analysis. Especially,
the plot of the nonparametric estimate of the population MCF yields
most of the information sought and the plot is as informative as is the
probability plot for life and other univariate data. The sample MCF can
be estimated and plot can be constructed for just one single machine
or for an entire fleet of machines in a population. Besides, it can also
be constructed for all failures events, outages, system failures due to
specific failure modes, etc. It can be used to track field recurrences and
identify recurrence trends, anomalous systems, unusual behavior, the
effect of various parameters (e.g., maintenance policies, environmental,
and operating conditions, etc.) on failures, etc. For some situations, this
is the only analysis we need to do, and in others, it becomes a precursor
to a more advance parametric form of analysis.
Non-Parametric Reliability Analysis 11

2.2 Mean Cumulative Function


A common and popular reliability metric of a repairable system is the
cumulative number of failure or repair events, N(t), occurring by time t
(also termed as system age). Here, age (or time) means any measure of
item’s usage, e.g., millage, kilometers, cycles, months, days, and so on. An
item’s latest observed age is called its suspension or censored age beyond
which its history is yet to be observed. A sample item may also not have
observed a single failure whereas others have observed one, two, or more
failures before its suspension age. Obviously, the number of events occur-
ring by time is random. In non-parametric failure (or repair) events data
analysis, every unit of the population can be described by a cumulative
history function for the number of failures. The population average of
cumulative number of failures (or repairs) at through time t is called Mean
dM (t )
Cumulative Function (MCF), M(t)(= E(N(t))). Its derivative, m(t ) = ,
dt
is assumed to exist and is termed as recurrence rate or intensity function
or population instantaneous repair rate at time t. This rate may remain
constant, increasing or decreasing in its characteristics and is expressed in
terms of occurrences per unit population item per unit time. It is a stair-
case function with a jump at each event occurrence in time and tracking
the accumulated number of events by time t of interest. It is the mean of all
staircase functions of every unit in the population.
Figure 2.1 shows an example of the cumulative history function for a
single system. The graph on cumulative number of failure events versus

MCF Plot
0.4
0.35
0.3
0.25
MCF

0.2
0.15
0.1
0.05
0
0 5000 10000 15000 20000 25000 30000 35000 40000 45000
t, in hours

Figure 2.1 A MCF example.


12 Repairable Systems Reliability Analysis

the system age, t. This graph can be viewed as a single observation from a
possible curve.
Let us take an example to illustrate the behavior of three units of identi-
cally designed systems operating under different environments or mainte-
nance scenarios through MCF.

Example 2.1
Consider of three reparable systems observed until the time of their 12th
failure the failure data [5].
System 1: 3, 9, 20, 25, 41, 50, 69, 91, 128, 151, 182, and 227.
System 2: 9, 20, 65, 88, 104, 107, 138, 143, 149, 186, 208, and 227.
System 3: 45, 76, 113, 129, 152, 174, 193, 199, 210, 219, 224, and
227.
Figures 2.2, 2.3, and 2.4, respectively, show the graphs of N(ti)
versus ti.

It is evident from the plots in Figures 2.2 to 2.4 that the three iden-
tical systems are behaving differently wherein the repair rates of these
systems show decreasing (an improving system), linear (a stable system),
and increasing (a deteriorating system) trends, respectively. In the above,
the actual number of events by time t provides an unbiased estimate of
the population mean number of failures (or repairs) per system, M(t).
This is valid in a situation where only a single system is available at the
time of analysis and other systems would appear in future when this sin-
gle system’s design is acceptable and satisfied the intended requirements.
However, in many cases, we are concerned with an overall behavior and
performance of several systems manufactured through identical processes

System 1
14
Cumulative number of failures

12
10
8
6

4
2

0
0 50 100 150 200 150
Time in hours

Figure 2.2 An improving system.


Non-Parametric Reliability Analysis 13

System 2
14
Cumulative Numbers of Failures
12

10
8

6
4
2

0
0 50 100 150 200 250
t, in hours

Figure 2.3 A stable system.

System 3
14
Cumulative Numbers of Failures

12

10
8

4
2

0
0 50 100 150 200 250
t, in hours

Figure 2.4 A deteriorating system.

and sub items. Even the deployment time of these systems differ and they
will have differing failure histories and operating times. Figure 2.5 shows
an example of the MCF of a sample of a fleet of randomly selected similar
repairable systems from a population.
Note that the intersection of the staircase functions with the vertical line
passing through an age ti creates a distribution for the values of cumulative
number of events, wherein a fraction of the population has accumulated
no failure, another fraction has accumulated one failure, yet another frac-
tion has accumulated two failures, and so on. This distribution differs at
different ages and has a mean MCF(ti) at age ti. Thus, the MCF plot is a
pointwise average of all population curves passing through the vertical line
at each age ti as can be seen in Figure 2.5.
14 Repairable Systems Reliability Analysis

14

12

10

8
Cumulative
Number of
Failures
6

0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Age

Figure 2.5 History and distribution of failures observed at age t.

Apart from the above type of failure histories, there may exist the
data in plenty or in a manner wherein the grouping of the data is viable
enough. It is a usually a standard practice of resorting to grouping the
data when the sample size is large enough as no significant information
is lost in statistical sense if the data is grouped into different intervals—
equal or unequal. We will consider both form of data and their subse-
quent analysis approach later in detail. Let us describe procedural steps
of MCF construction [4].

2.3 Construction of MCF Plot and Confidence


Bounds: Exact Age Data
2.3.1 MCF Construction: Exact Age Data
The sample MCF can be estimated and its plot can be constructed in a very
straightforward manner by following these three simple steps:

1. Rank order all failure and censored times, i.e., sorted from
shortest to longest by pooling the failure history of n number
Non-Parametric Reliability Analysis 15

of randomly selected systems drawn from a population of


such systems. If a failure time for a unit is the same as its
censoring time, the failure time is ordered first. In case of
multiple units have a common recurrence or censoring age,
then follow an arbitrary order.
2. Calculate the number of units, ri, that have observed life ti
just prior to the occurrence of failure event or number of
units after the suspensions occur, i.e.,

ri 1, if t i is the age of event recurrence


ri ri 1, if t i is the age of a su
uspension,
with r0 n at the first observed age

3. The MCF is calculated for each sample recurrence age ti, as

1 1
MCFi = + MCFi −1 with MCF0 =
ri r0

The above procedure is illustrated through following examples.

Example 2.2. [6]


An oil refinery company maintains a rotating machine and wants to make
projections about the expected cumulative number of failures for 100 sim-
ilar rotating machines after 4 years (equal to 35,040 hours) of operation.
Failure and suspension data, in hours, for a random sample of 22 machines
were collected. Every time a machine fails, a crew repairs the machine to
put back again in service. Table 2.1 gives the failure and censoring ages for
each machine, where + sign indicates a censored age.
The MCF estimates by following the procedural steps is given in col-
umns 4 to 6 of Table 2.2 and MCF plot is shown in Figure 2.6. The com-
putation of confidence bounds given in the last column #8 of Table 2.2 is
explained later.
Looking at MCF plot in Figure 2.6, the company can expect the number of
failures per machine after years of operation is, M(35040) = 0.3658. Therefore,
out of the 100 machines, about 37 failures are expected to occur. It can be
observed that if a smooth curve is drawn through the MCF plot, it would have
its derivative decreasing in nature, i.e., repair rate decreases as the machine
ages and it improves with use. This behavior shown can either be by a typical
16 Repairable Systems Reliability Analysis

Table 2.1 Rotating machine failure


data of Example 2.2.
Machine ID# ti (Hours)
1. 942,435,659+
2. 3,718,412+
3. 64,192,039,779+
4. 70,734,213+
5. 1,898,029,016+
6. 185,128,177+
7. 28,535+
8. 29,168+
9. 679,224,304+
10. 28,921+
11. 27,853+
12. 29,981+
13. 25,761+
14. 28,780+
15. 24,901+
16. 31,360+
17. 23,940+
18. 26,009+
19. 32,236+
20. 30,472+
21. 23,792+
22. 30,183+
Non-Parametric Reliability Analysis 17

Table 2.2 MCF and confidence calculations.


MCF(ti)
1
Machine (8)
ID# ti State ri
ri MCF(ti) Var(MCF(ti))
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) UB LB

2 37 F 22 0.0455 0.0455 0.0020 0.1590 0.0130

3 64 F 22 0.0455 0.0909 0.0039 0.2204 0.0375

4 707 F 22 0.0455 0.1364 0.0059 0.2810 0.0662

6 1,851 F 22 0.0455 0.1818 0.0079 0.3400 0.0972

3 1,920 F 22 0.0455 0.2273 0.0099 0.3979 0.1298

9 6,792 F 22 0.0455 0.2727 0.0118 0.4547 0.1636

1 9,424 F 22 0.0455 0.3182 0.0138 0.5107 0.1982

2 18,412 S 21

5 18,980 F 21 0.0476 0.3658 0.0160 0.5695 0.2350

21 23,792 S 20 0.4
0.35
17 23,940 S 19 0.3
0.25
9 24,304 S 18
MCF

0.2
0.15
15 24,901 S 17 0.1
0.05
13 25,761 S 16
0
0 5000 10000 15000 20000 25000 30000 35000 40000 45000
18 26,009 S 15 t, in hours

11 27,853 S 14 Figure 2.6 MCF plot of Example 2.2.


6 28,177 S 13

7 28,535 S 12

14 28,780 S 11

10 28,921 S 10

5 29,016 S 9

(Continued)
18 Repairable Systems Reliability Analysis

Table 2.2 MCF and confidence calculations. (Continued)


MCF(ti)
1
Machine (8)
ID# ti State ri
ri MCF(ti) Var(MCF(ti))
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) UB LB

8 29,168 S 8

12 29,981 S 7

22 30,183 S 6

20 30,472 S 5

16 31,360 S 4

19 32,236 S 3

4 34,213 S 2

1 35,659 S 1

3 39,779 S 0

product with manufacturing defects corrected gradually or the effectiveness of


the maintenance activity or improved learning curve of the operator.

Example 2.3. [6]


An electronics company subjects its products to a burn-in1 program to reduce
the occurrences for failures and the need for repairs in the field. Every pro-
duced unit is run, repaired upon failure and placed back into the test until the
population’s (instantaneous) recurrence rate decreases to a desired value mgoal.
What would be the an appropriate burn-in period tb that would achieve the
recurrence rate to a desired value, mgoal, equal to 1 failure per 50,000 cycles?
The collected recurrent failures data and the sample MCF are shown in
dM (t )
Table 2.3. Recall that the derivative, m(t ) = , is termed as recurrence
dt
rate or intensity function or population instantaneous repair rate at time t.
Therefore, tb can be estimated from the sample MCF by moving a straight
line with slope mgoal, until it becomes tangent to the smoothed MCF plot.
The corresponding age at the tangent point determines the appropriate
burn-in period. It can be done manually by fitting a smoothed curve and
finding the points where its slope becomes 1/50,000.

1
This type of burn-in program is different from many burn-in programs in which failed
units are disregarded and only the units that survive the burn-in are shipped to customers.
Non-Parametric Reliability Analysis 19

Table 2.3 Example 2.3—Burn-in period determination.


Product_ID S. No. ti State ri 1/ri MCF(ti)
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)
2 1 28 F 17 0.0588 0.0588
3 2 48 F 17 0.0588 0.1176
4 3 530 F 17 0.0588 0.1765
7 4 1,388 F 17 0.0588 0.2353
3 5 14,40 F 17 0.0588 0.2941
7 6 1,455 S 0.2941
1 7 7,068 F 16 0.0625 0.3566
16 8 8,250 F 16 0.0625 0.4191
2 9 13,809 S 0.4191
6 10 14,235 S 0.4191
15 11 14,281 S 0.4191
10 12 19,175 S 0.4191
17 13 19,250 F 12 0.0833 0.5025
8 14 19,403 S 0.5025
11 15 20,425 S 0.5025
9 16 20,997 S 0.5025
13 17 21,144 S 0.5025
14 18 21,237 S 0.5025
5 19 21,762 S 0.5025
17 20 21,888 S 0.5025
16 21 21,974 S 0.5025
12 22 22,149 S 0.5025
4 23 25,660 S 0.5025
1 24 26,744 S 0.5025
3 25 29,834 S 0.5025
20 Repairable Systems Reliability Analysis

Burn-in Time Estimation


0.9
0.8 MCF = 0.0262(Age)0.2937
0.7 R2 = 0.9397
0.6
0.5
MCF

0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
0 5000 10000 15000 20000 25000 30000 35000
Age (in cycles)

MCF Tangent with slope 1/50000 Fitted Curve

Figure 2.7 Graphical plots of Example 2.3.

Figure 2.7 shows plot of MCF (data of column 3rd and 7th in Table 2.3.
Example 2.3—Burn-in period determination), power function fitted curve,
its equation and index of fit, and the tangent with a slope of 1/50,000. The
burn-in period can also be found out analytically as

MCF , M (t ) 0.0262t 0.2937 ,


dM (t ) 1
m(t ) 0.0262 0.2937 t 0.2937 1
dt 50, 000

Therefore, t = 4,572.62 cycles with MCF(4,572.62) = 0.3114.

2.3.2 Confidence Bounds on MCF: Exact Age Data


Assuming that the values of cumulative number of events at any recur-
rence age follow a lognormal distribution, then at any recurrence age ti,
the upper and lower confidence bounds of MCF can be computed by [7, 8]

K Var ( MCF (ti ))


MCF (ti )
MCF (ti )L MCF (ti )e , and
K Var ( MCF (ti ))
MCF (ti )
MCF (ti )U MCF (ti )e , respectively.
Non-Parametric Reliability Analysis 21

Here, 0.50 < δ < 1 is the confidence level, Kδ is the δ standard normal
percentile, and Var(MCF(ti)) is the MCF variance at recurrence age ti. The
variance is calculated by

 2
 1 
1
Var ( MCF (ti )) = Var ( MCF (ti−1 )) + 2 ∑
ri  j∈R 
d ji − 
ri  
 ti 

Where Rti is the set of the units that have not been suspended by ti and
dji is defined as follows:
dji = 1, if jth unit had an event recurrence at age ti
dji = 0, if jth unit did not have an event recurrence at age ti

Based on the above equations, the computed variance, lower and upper
bounds are provided in the columns #7 and #8, respectively, of Table 2.2.
MCF and confidence calculations. Figure 2.8 shows the plots of with con-
fidence bounds on the MCF.
The estimated 90% upper confidence bounds for the cumulative num-
ber of failures after four year of operation for 100 units is 0.5695 × 100 ≈
57 failures. This information can be used for estimating the repair costs

confidence bounds
0.6

0.5

0.4
MCF

0.3

0.2

0.1

0
0 5000 10000 15000 20000 25000 30000 35000 40000 45000
Age, in hours

MCF UPPER BOUND LOWER BOUND

Figure 2.8 MCF with confidence bounds of Example 2.2 data.


22 Repairable Systems Reliability Analysis

or planning for spares. The ensuing section presents the non-parametric


estimate of sample MCF from the grouped data.

2.3.3 Construction of MCF Plot and Confidence Bounds:


Grouped Data
The procedural steps to calculate MCF for grouped data are as follows [4]:

1. If the data is not available in grouped form, determine


the numbers of intervals and interval size from the data
range. A well-known Sturges’s rule can be utilized to deter-
mine the desirable number of groups into which a distri-
bution of observations should be classified; the number of
groups or classes is 1 + 3.3 log n, where n is the number of
observations.
2. Determine the number of occurrences and suspensions
events in each interval and tabulate them.
3. Enter the number of units (N) entering in the successive
interval considering suspensions (Ci) with an initial sample
size of Ni for i = 0. The subsequent samples are computed as,
Ni = Ni−1 − Ci−1.
4. Compute the MCF, MCF(ti) = MCF(ti−1) + m(ti), where
the average number of recurrent events per sample unit
over an interval i (increment in MCF(ti)) is given by
Ri
m(ti ) = . The Ri d enotes the number of recur-
( N i − 0.5 × Ci )
rent event in ith group and denominator provides an average
number of units in that group.
5. Plot MCF with respect to the interval ages.

2.3.4 Confidence Bounds on MCF: Grouped Data


As stated in [4] that to calculate approximate confidence bounds for MCF
from interval data as computation of correct limits are complicated and
cannot be computed using simple procedure. Nelson [4] suggested that
the naïve confidence bounds for the exact data can extended to rather than
in an easy manner and do not require all the individual item’s history. The
approximate confidence bounds of MCF are computed by

MCF ti MCF (ti ) K var (MCF (ti )) and


L
Non-Parametric Reliability Analysis 23

( MCF (t ))
i
L
= MCF (ti ) − Kδ var ( MCF (ti ))

where
i
m(t j )
(
var MCF ti ≅ ( )) ∑ (N − 0.5 × C )
j j
j =1

We explain the interval age analysis by applying it on a curtailed prob-


lem given in the Chapter 5 of reference [4].

Example 2.4. [4]


Table 2.4 shows the field data (grouped by months in service) on replace-
ments of defrost controls in refrigerators. Calculate the MCF estimate for
the cumulative percent replaced. What would be the number of replace-
ments over a 15-year typical life of such refrigerators?
The last column of Table 2.4 shows the MCF(ti), which is plotted in
Figure 2.9. The second-order polynomial is found to be a better fit than a
power relation. From this polynomial fit, the number of replacements over
a period of 15 years turns out to be replacements per refrigerators.
However, one can observe that there is large number of suspensions
occurred in 12th and 24th month, respectively. The investigation revealed that
first 12-month data came from refrigerators whose owners had sent in a dated
purchase record card and thus has known installation date and this date and
date of a control replacement were used to calculate the refrigerator’s age at
each replacement. The data on month 13 through 24 months came from the
refrigerators whose owners’ extended the warranty for another year for all
parts and labor. The data from 25th through 29th months came from refrig-
erators whose owners’ bought warranty for another year. Thus, the second
and third year data representative of subpopulations with high replacement
rate, not the population as a whole, consequently, the MCF plot consists of
pieces of MCF’s of three subpopulations, giving an appearance of increasing
replacement rate, whereas the population rate was essentially constant. This
can be verified by taking the data of first 12 months’ period only.

2.4 Case Study: ROV System


The Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) are unoccupied, highly maneu-
verable underwater robots that can be used to explore ocean depths while
24
Table 2.4 Data for Example 2.4.
Month i Number of replacements, Ri Number entered, Ni Number suspended, Ci m(ti) MCF(ti)
1. 83 22,914 0.0036 0.0036
2. 35 22,914 0.0015 0.0051
3. 23 22,914 0.0010 0.0062

4. 15 22,914 0.0007 0.0068


5 22 22,914 0.0010 0.0078
6. 16 22,914 3 0.0007 0.0085

7. 13 22,911 36 0.0006 0.0090


8. 12 22,875 24 0.0005 0.0096
9. 15 22,851 29 0.0007 0.0102
Repairable Systems Reliability Analysis

10. 15 22,822 37 0.0007 0.0109

11. 24 22,785 40 0.0011 0.0119


12. 12 22,745 20041 0.0009 0.0129
13. 7 2,704 14 0.0026 0.0155

14. 11 2,690 17 0.0041 0.0196


(Continued)
Table 2.4 Data for Example 2.4. (Continued)
Month i Number of replacements, Ri Number entered, Ni Number suspended, Ci m(ti) MCF(ti)
15. 15 2,673 13 0.0056 0.0252
16. 6 2,660 28 0.0023 0.0275

17. 8 2,632 22 0.0031 0.0305


18. 9 2,610 27 0.0035 0.0340
19. 9 2,583 64 0.0035 0.0375

20. 5 2,519 94 0.0020 0.0395


21. 6 2,425 119 0.0025 0.0421
22. 6 2,306 118 0.0027 0.0447

23. 6 2,188 138 0.0028 0.0476


24. 5 2,050 1188 0.0034 0.0510
25. 7 862 17 0.0082 0.0592
26. 5 845 28 0.0060 0.0652
27. 5 817 99 0.0065 0.0717
Non-Parametric Reliability Analysis

28. 6 718 128 0.0092 0.0809


29. 3 590 590 0.0102 0.0911
25
26 Repairable Systems Reliability Analysis

MCF Plot
0.1000
0.0900 y = 0.0017x1.0212
y = 0.0001x2 - 0.0008x + 0.0073
R2 = 0.8681
0.0800 R2 = 0.9895
0.0700
0.0600
MCF

0.0500
0.0400
0.0300
0.0200
0.0100
0.0000
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
Month

MCF Poly. (MCF) Power (MCF)

Figure 2.9 MCF plot of Example 2.4.

Figure 2.10 A ROV. (Image taken from: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/55267618549​


5210644/?nic=1).

being operated by someone at the water surface, i.e., it allows to explore


the ocean without actually being inside the ocean (https://oceanexploreer.
noaa.gov/facts/rov.html). A typical ROV is shown in Figure 2.10.
These underwater robots are controlled by a person typically on a sur-
face vessel, using a joystick in a similar way that one would play a video
game. A group of cables, or tether, connects the ROV to the ship, sending
electrical signals back and forth between the operator and the vehicle. Most
ROVs are equipped with at least a still camera, video camera, and lights to
transmit images and video back to the ship. Additional equipment, such as
Non-Parametric Reliability Analysis 27

a manipulator or cutting arm, water samplers, and instruments that mea-


sure parameters like water clarity and temperature, may also be added to
vehicles to allow for sample collection. Initially developed for industrial
applications, such as internal and external inspections of underwater pipe-
lines and the structural testing of offshore platforms, ROVs are now used
for many scientific applications. They have proven extremely valuable in
ocean exploration and are also used for educational programs at aquaria
and to link to scientific expeditions live via the Internet.
ROVs range in size from that of a small computer to as large as a small
truck. Larger ROVs are very heavy and need other equipment such as a
winch to put them over the side of a ship and into the water. While using
ROVs eliminates the “human presence” in the water, in most cases, ROV
operations are simpler and safer to conduct than any type of occupied-­
submersible or diving operation because operators can stay safe (and dry!)
on ship decks. ROVs allow to investigate areas that are too deep for humans
to safely dive themselves, and ROVs can stay underwater much longer than
a human diver, expanding the time available for exploration.
An industry, dealing with remote operation of subsea well equipment,
has been observing downtime issues due to a series of failures observed in
its remotely operated underwater vehicle system despite following a fixed-
time preventive maintenance schedule. The downtime is becoming a cause
of concern due to revenue losses and its reputation. Therefore, apart from
the other measures, the company decided to conduct a preliminary reli-
ability study to carry out an assessment of its operational fleet by using
their recorded failure data. In this study, the data for a fleet of 53 systems
with 488-recorded failures during last 5-years were available. A total of 14
failure modes, corresponding to 488 failure entries, were observed and are
presented in Table 2.5. Here, we are only presenting the case for the sake of
application of the methodology presented in this chapter by applying the
approach on the 2-year period data set.
Based on data available and questions, we wish to answer, two
approaches had been followed, i.e., (i) interval age analysis and (ii) exact
age analysis.

2.5 Interval Age Analysis


2.5.1 MCF With All Types of Failure Modes Combined
Table 2.6 displays failure data of ROV by grouping it in 1-month interval
associated to the observed failure modes. There were a total of 267 system
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enough if we were gregarious enough to enjoy the companionship of
others, to be able to coöperate with them, and to feel a slight malaise
at solitude. Unfortunately, however, this impulse is not content with
these reasonable and healthful demands, but insists that like-
mindedness shall prevail everywhere, in all departments of life. So
that all human progress, all novelty, and non-conformity, must be
carried against the resistance of this tyrannical herd-instinct which
drives the individual into obedience and conformity with the majority.
Even in the most modern and enlightened societies this impulse
shows little sign of abating. As it is driven by inexorable economic
demand out of the sphere of utility, it seems to fasten itself ever more
fiercely in the realm of feeling and opinion, so that conformity comes
to be a thing aggressively desired and demanded.
The gregarious impulse keeps its hold all the more virulently
because when the group is in motion or is taking any positive action,
this feeling of being with and supported by the collective herd very
greatly feeds that will to power, the nourishment of which the
individual organism so constantly demands. You feel powerful by
conforming, and you feel forlorn and helpless if you are out of the
crowd. While even if you do not get any access of power by thinking
and feeling just as everybody else in your group does, you get at
least the warm feeling of obedience, the soothing irresponsibility of
protection.
Joining as it does to these very vigorous tendencies of the individual
—the pleasure in power and the pleasure in obedience—this
gregarious impulse becomes irresistible in society. War stimulates it
to the highest possible degree, sending the influences of its
mysterious herd-current with its inflations of power and obedience to
the farthest reaches of the society, to every individual and little group
that can possibly be affected. And it is these impulses which the
State—the organization of the entire herd, the entire collectivity—is
founded on and makes use of.
There is, of course, in the feeling towards the State a large element
of pure filial mysticism. The sense of insecurity, the desire for
protection, sends one’s desire back to the father and mother, with
whom is associated the earliest feelings of protection. It is not for
nothing that one’s State is still thought of as Father or Motherland,
that one’s relation towards it is conceived in terms of family affection.
The war has shown that nowhere under the shock of danger have
these primitive childlike attitudes failed to assert themselves again,
as much in this country as anywhere. If we have not the intense
Father-sense of the German who worships his Vaterland, at least in
Uncle Sam we have a symbol of protecting, kindly authority, and in
the many Mother-posters of the Red Cross, we see how easily in the
more tender functions of war-service, the ruling organization is
conceived in family terms. A people at war have become in the most
literal sense obedient, respectful, trustful children again, full of that
naïve faith in the all-wisdom and all-power of the adult who takes
care of them, imposes his mild but necessary rule upon them and in
whom they lose their responsibility and anxieties. In this
recrudescence of the child, there is great comfort, and a certain
influx of power. On most people the strain of being an independent
adult weighs heavily, and upon none more than those members of
the significant classes who have had bequeathed to them or have
assumed the responsibilities of governing. The State provides the
convenientest of symbols under which these classes can retain all
the actual pragmatic satisfaction of governing, but can rid
themselves of the psychic burden of adulthood. They continue to
direct industry and government and all the institutions of society
pretty much as before, but in their own conscious eyes and in the
eyes of the general public, they are turned from their selfish and
predatory ways, and have become loyal servants of society, or
something greater than they—the State. The man who moves from
the direction of a large business in New York to a post in the war
management industrial service in Washington does not apparently
alter very much his power or his administrative technique. But
psychically, what a transfiguration has occurred! His is now not only
the power but the glory! And his sense of satisfaction is directly
proportional not to the genuine amount of personal sacrifice that may
be involved in the change but to the extent to which he retains his
industrial prerogatives and sense of command.
From members of this class a certain insuperable indignation arises
if the change from private enterprise to State service involves any
real loss of power and personal privilege. If there is to be pragmatic
sacrifice, let it be, they feel, on the field of honor, in the traditionally
acclaimed deaths by battle, in that detour to suicide, as Nietzsche
calls war. The State in wartime supplies satisfaction for this very real
craving, but its chief value is the opportunity it gives for this
regression to infantile attitudes. In your reaction to an imagined
attack on your country or an insult to its government, you draw closer
to the herd for protection, you conform in word and deed, and you
insist vehemently that everybody else shall think, speak and act
together. And you fix your adoring gaze upon the State, with a truly
filial look, as upon the Father of the flock, the quasi-personal symbol
of the strength of the herd, and the leader and determinant of your
definite action and ideas.
The members of the working-classes, that portion at least which
does not identify itself with the significant classes and seek to imitate
it and rise to it, are notoriously less affected by the symbolism of the
State, or, in other words, are less patriotic than the significant
classes. For theirs is neither the power nor the glory. The State in
wartime does not offer them the opportunity to regress, for, never
having acquired social adulthood, they cannot lose it. If they have
been drilled and regimented, as by the industrial régime of the last
century, they go out docilely enough to do battle for their State, but
they are almost entirely without that filial sense and even without that
herd-intellect sense which operates so powerfully among their
“betters.” They live habitually in an industrial serfdom, by which
though nominally free, they are in practice as a class bound to a
system of machine-production the implements of which they do not
own, and in the distribution of whose product they have not the
slightest voice, except what they can occasionally exert by a veiled
intimidation which draws slightly more of the product in their
direction. From such serfdom, military conscription is not so great a
change. But into the military enterprise they go, not with those
hurrahs of the significant classes whose instincts war so powerfully
feeds, but with the same apathy with which they enter and continue
in the industrial enterprise.
From this point of view, war can be called almost an upper-class
sport. The novel interests and excitements it provides, the inflations
of power, the satisfaction it gives to those very tenacious human
impulses—gregariousness and parent-regression—endow it with all
the qualities of a luxurious collective game which is felt intensely just
in proportion to the sense of significant rule the person has in the
class-division of his society. A country at war—particularly our own
country at war—does not act as a purely homogeneous herd. The
significant classes have all the herd-feeling in all its primitive
intensity, but there are barriers, or at least differentials of intensity, so
that this feeling does not flow freely without impediment throughout
the entire nation. A modern country represents a long historical and
social process of disaggregation of the herd. The nation at peace is
not a group, it is a network of myriads of groups representing the
coöperation and similar feeling of men on all sorts of planes and in
all sorts of human interests and enterprises. In every modern
industrial country, there are parallel planes of economic classes with
divergent attitudes and institutions and interests—bourgeois and
proletariat, with their many subdivisions according to power and
function, and even their interweaving, such as those more highly
skilled workers who habitually identify themselves with the owning
and the significant classes and strive to raise themselves to the
bourgeois level, imitating their cultural standards and manners. Then
there are religious groups with a certain definite, though weakening
sense of kinship, and there are the powerful ethnic groups which
behave almost as cultural colonies in the New World, clinging
tenaciously to language and historical tradition, though their
herdishness is usually founded on cultural rather than State symbols.
There are even certain vague sectional groupings. All these small
sects, political parties, classes, levels, interests, may act as foci for
herd-feelings. They intersect and interweave, and the same person
may be a member of several different groups lying at different
planes. Different occasions will set off his herd-feeling in one
direction or another. In a religious crisis he will be intensely
conscious of the necessity that his sect (or sub-herd) may prevail; in
a political campaign, that his party shall triumph.
To the spread of herd-feeling, therefore, all these smaller herds offer
resistance. To the spread of that herd-feeling which arises from the
threat of war, and which would normally involve the entire nation, the
only groups which make serious resistance are those, of course,
which continue to identify themselves with the other nation from
which they or their parents have come. In times of peace they are for
all practical purposes citizens of their new country. They keep alive
their ethnic traditions more as a luxury than anything. Indeed these
traditions tend rapidly to die out except where they connect with
some still unresolved nationalistic cause abroad, with some struggle
for freedom, or some irredentism. If they are consciously opposed by
a too invidious policy of Americanism, they tend to be strengthened.
And in time of war, these ethnic elements which have any traditional
connection with the enemy, even though most of the individuals may
have little real sympathy with the enemy’s cause, are naturally
lukewarm to the herd-feeling of the nation which goes back to State
traditions in which they have no share. But to the natives imbued
with State-feeling, any such resistance or apathy is intolerable. This
herd-feeling, this newly awakened consciousness of the State,
demands universality. The leaders of the significant classes, who
feel most intensely this State-compulsion, demand a one hundred
per cent. Americanism, among one hundred per cent. of the
population. The State is a jealous God and will brook no rivals. Its
sovereignty must pervade every one, and all feeling must be run into
the stereotyped forms of romantic patriotic militarism which is the
traditional expression of the State herd-feeling.
Thus arises conflict within the State. War becomes almost a sport
between the hunters and the hunted. The pursuit of enemies within
outweighs in psychic attractiveness the assault on the enemy
without. The whole terrific force of the State is brought to bear
against the heretics. The nation boils with a slow insistent fever. A
white terrorism is carried on by the Government against pacifists,
Socialists, enemy aliens, and a milder unofficial persecution against
all persons or movements that can be imagined as connected with
the enemy. War, which should be the health of the State, unifies all
the bourgeois elements and the common people, and outlaws the
rest. The revolutionary proletariat shows more resistance to this
unification, is, as we have seen, psychically out of the current. Its
vanguard, as the I. W. W., is remorselessly pursued, in spite of the
proof that it is a symptom, not a cause, and its prosecution increases
the disaffection of labor and intensifies the friction instead of
lessening it.
But the emotions that play around the defense of the State do not
take into consideration the pragmatic results. A nation at war, led by
its significant classes, is engaged in liberating certain of its impulses
which have had all too little exercise in the past. It is getting certain
satisfactions and the actual conduct of the war or the condition of the
country are really incidental to the enjoyment of new forms of virtue
and power and aggressiveness. If it could be shown conclusively
that the persecution of slightly disaffected elements actually
increased enormously the difficulties of production and the
organization of the war-technique, it would be found that public
policy would scarcely change. The significant classes must have
their pleasure in hunting down and chastizing everything that they
feel instinctively to be not imbued with the current State-enthusiasm,
though the State itself be actually impeded in its efforts to carry out
those objects for which they are passionately contending. The best
proof of this is that with a pursuit of plotters that has continued with
ceaseless vigilance ever since the beginning of the war in Europe,
the concrete crimes unearthed and punished have been fewer than
those prosecutions for the mere crime of opinion or the expression of
sentiments critical of the State or the national policy. The punishment
for opinion has been far more ferocious and unintermittent than the
punishment of pragmatic crime. Unimpeachable Anglo-Saxon
Americans who were freer of pacifist or socialist utterance than the
State-obsessed ruling public opinion, received heavier penalties and
even greater opprobrium, in many instances, than the definitely
hostile German plotter. A public opinion which, almost without
protest, accepts as just, adequate, beautiful, deserved and in fitting
harmony with ideals of liberty and freedom of speech, a sentence of
twenty years in prison for mere utterances, no matter what they may
be, shows itself to be suffering from a kind of social derangement of
values, a sort of social neurosis, that deserves analysis and
comprehension.
On our entrance into the war, there were many persons who
predicted exactly this derangement of values, who feared lest
democracy suffer more at home from an America at war than could
be gained for democracy abroad. That fear has been amply justified.
The question whether the American nation would act like an
enlightened democracy going to war for the sake of high ideals, or
like a State-obsessed herd, has been decisively answered. The
record is written and cannot be erased. History will decide whether
the terrorization of opinion, and the regimentation of life was justified
under the most idealistic of democratic administrations. It will see
that when the American nation had ostensibly a chance to conduct a
gallant war, with scrupulous regard to the safety of democratic
values at home, it chose rather to adopt all the most obnoxious and
coercive techniques of the enemy and of the other countries at war,
and to rival in intimidation and ferocity of punishment the worst
governmental systems of the age. For its former unconsciousness
and disrespect of the State ideal, the nation apparently paid the
penalty in a violent swing to the other extreme. It acted so exactly
like a herd in its irrational coercion of minorities that there is no
artificiality in interpreting the progress of the war in terms of the herd
psychology. It unwittingly brought out into the strongest relief the true
characteristics of the State and its intimate alliance with war. It
provided for the enemies of war and the critics of the State the most
telling arguments possible. The new passion for the State ideal
unwittingly set in motion and encouraged forces that threaten very
materially to reform the State. It has shown those who are really
determined to end war that the problem is not the mere simple one
of finishing a war that will end war.
For war is a complicated way in which a nation acts, and it acts so
out of a spiritual compulsion which pushes it on, perhaps against all
its interests, all its real desires, and all its real sense of values. It is
States that make wars and not nations, and the very thought and
almost necessity of war is bound up with the ideal of the State. Not
for centuries have nations made war; in fact the only historical
example of nations making war is the great barbarian invasions into
southern Europe, the invasions of Russia from the East, and
perhaps the sweep of Islam through Northern Africa into Europe
after Mohammed’s death. And the motivations for such wars were
either the restless expansion of migratory tribes or the flame of
religious fanaticism. Perhaps these great movements could scarcely
be called wars at all, for war implies an organized people drilled and
led; in fact, it necessitates the State. Ever since Europe has had any
such organization, such huge conflicts between nations—nations,
that is, as cultural groups—have been unthinkable. It is preposterous
to assume that for centuries in Europe there would have been any
possibility of a people en masse, (with their own leaders, and not
with the leaders of their duly constituted State), rising up and
overflowing their borders in a war raid upon a neighboring people.
The wars of the Revolutionary armies of France were clearly in
defense of an imperiled freedom, and, moreover, they were clearly
directed not against other peoples, but against the autocratic
governments that were combining to crush the Revolution. There is
no instance in history of a genuinely national war. There are
instances of national defenses, among primitive civilizations such as
the Balkan peoples, against intolerable invasion by neighboring
despots or oppression. But war, as such, cannot occur except in a
system of competing States, which have relations with each other
through the channels of diplomacy.
War is a function of this system of States, and could not occur except
in such a system. Nations organized for internal administration,
nations organized as a federation of free communities, nations
organized in any way except that of a political centralization of a
dynasty, or the reformed descendant of a dynasty, could not possibly
make war upon each other. They would not only have no motive for
conflict, but they would be unable to muster the concentrated force
to make war effective. There might be all sorts of amateur
marauding, there might be guerilla expeditions of group against
group, but there could not be that terrible war en masse of the
national State, that exploitation of the nation in the interests of the
State, that abuse of the national life and resource in the frenzied
mutual suicide, which is modern war.
It cannot be too firmly realized that war is a function of States and
not of nations, indeed that it is the chief function of States. War is a
very artificial thing. It is not the naïve spontaneous outburst of herd
pugnacity; it is no more primary than is formal religion. War cannot
exist without a military establishment, and a military establishment
cannot exist without a State organization. War has an immemorial
tradition and heredity only because the State has a long tradition and
heredity. But they are inseparably and functionally joined. We cannot
crusade against war without crusading implicitly against the State.
And we cannot expect, or take measures to ensure, that this war is a
war to end war, unless at the same time we take measures to end
the State in its traditional form. The State is not the nation, and the
State can be modified and even abolished in its present form,
without harming the nation. On the contrary, with the passing of the
dominance of the State, the genuine life-enhancing forces of the
nation will be liberated. If the State’s chief function is war, then the
State must suck out of the nation a large part of its energy for its
purely sterile purposes of defense and aggression. It devotes to
waste or to actual destruction as much as it can of the vitality of the
nation. No one will deny that war is a vast complex of life-destroying
and life-crippling forces. If the State’s chief function is war, then it is
chiefly concerned with coördinating and developing the powers and
techniques which make for destruction. And this means not only the
actual and potential destruction of the enemy, but of the nation at
home as well. For the very existence of a State in a system of States
means that the nation lies always under a risk of war and invasion,
and the calling away of energy into military pursuits means a
crippling of the productive and life-enhancing processes of the
national life.
All this organizing of death-dealing energy and technique is not a
natural but a very sophisticated process. Particularly in modern
nations, but also all through the course of modern European history,
it could never exist without the State. For it meets the demands of no
other institution, it follows the desires of no religious, industrial,
political group. If the demand for military organization and a military
establishment seems to come not from the officers of the State but
from the public, it is only that it comes from the State-obsessed
portion of the public, those groups which feel most keenly the State
ideal. And in this country we have had evidence all too indubitable
how powerless the pacifically minded officers of State may be in the
face of a State-obsession of the significant classes. If a powerful
section of the significant classes feels more intensely the attitudes of
the State, then they will most infallibly mold the Government in time
to their wishes, bring it back to act as the embodiment of the State
which it pretends to be. In every country we have seen groups that
were more loyal than the king—more patriotic than the Government
—the Ulsterites in Great Britain, the Junkers in Prussia, l’Action
Française in France, our patrioteers in America. These groups exist
to keep the steering wheel of the State straight, and they prevent the
nation from ever veering very far from the State ideal.
Militarism expresses the desires and satisfies the major impulse only
of this class. The other classes, left to themselves, have too many
necessities and interests and ambitions, to concern themselves with
so expensive and destructive a game. But the State-obsessed group
is either able to get control of the machinery of the State or to
intimidate those in control, so that it is able through use of the
collective force to regiment the other grudging and reluctant classes
into a military programme. State idealism percolates down through
the strata of society; capturing groups and individuals just in
proportion to the prestige of this dominant class. So that we have the
herd actually strung along between two extremes, the militaristic
patriots at one end, who are scarcely distinguishable in attitude and
animus from the most reactionary Bourbons of an Empire, and
unskilled labor groups, which entirely lack the State sense. But the
State acts as a whole, and the class that controls governmental
machinery can swing the effective action of the herd as a whole. The
herd is not actually a whole, emotionally. But by an ingenious mixture
of cajolery, agitation, intimidation, the herd is licked into shape, into
an effective mechanical unity, if not into a spiritual whole. Men are
told simultaneously that they will enter the military establishment of
their own volition, as their splendid sacrifice for their country’s
welfare, and that if they do not enter they will be hunted down and
punished with the most horrid penalties; and under a most
indescribable confusion of democratic pride and personal fear they
submit to the destruction of their livelihood if not their lives, in a way
that would formerly have seemed to them so obnoxious as to be
incredible.
In this great herd-machinery, dissent is like sand in the bearings. The
State ideal is primarily a sort of blind animal push towards military
unity. Any interference with that unity turns the whole vast impulse
towards crushing it. Dissent is speedily outlawed, and the
Government, backed by the significant classes and those who in
every locality, however small, identify themselves with them,
proceeds against the outlaws, regardless of their value to the other
institutions of the nation, or to the effect their persecution may have
on public opinion. The herd becomes divided into the hunters and
the hunted, and war-enterprise becomes not only a technical game
but a sport as well.
It must never be forgotten that nations do not declare war on each
other, nor in the strictest sense is it nations that fight each other.
Much has been said to the effect that modern wars are wars of
whole peoples and not of dynasties. Because the entire nation is
regimented and the whole resources of the country are levied on for
war, this does not mean that it is the country qua country which is
fighting. It is the country organized as a State that is fighting, and
only as a State would it possibly fight. So, literally, it is States which
make war on each other and not peoples. Governments are the
agents of States, and it is Governments which declare war on each
other, acting truest to form in the interests of the great State ideal
they represent. There is no case known in modern times of the
people being consulted in the initiation of a war. The present demand
for democratic control of foreign policy indicates how completely,
even in the most democratic of modern nations, foreign policy has
been the secret private possession of the executive branch of the
Government.
However representative of the people Parliaments and Congresses
may be in all that concerns the internal administration of a country’s
political affairs, in international relations it has never been possible to
maintain that the popular body acted except as a wholly mechanical
ratifier of the Executive’s will. The formality by which Parliaments
and Congresses declare war is the merest technicality. Before such
a declaration can take place, the country will have been brought to
the very brink of war by the foreign policy of the Executive. A long
series of steps on the downward path, each one more fatally
committing the unsuspecting country to a warlike course of action
will have been taken without either the people or its representatives
being consulted or expressing its feeling. When the declaration of
war is finally demanded by the Executive, the Parliament or
Congress could not refuse it without reversing the course of history,
without repudiating what has been representing itself in the eyes of
the other States as the symbol and interpreter of the nation’s will and
animus. To repudiate an Executive at that time would be to publish to
the entire world the evidence that the country had been grossly
deceived by its own Government, that the country with an almost
criminal carelessness had allowed its Government to commit it to
gigantic national enterprises in which it had no heart. In such a crisis,
even a Parliament which in the most democratic States represents
the common man and not the significant classes who most strongly
cherish the State ideal, will cheerfully sustain the foreign policy which
it understands even less than it would care for if it understood, and
will vote almost unanimously for an incalculable war, in which the
nation may be brought well nigh to ruin. That is why the referendum
which was advocated by some people as a test of American
sentiment in entering the war was considered even by thoughtful
democrats to be something subtly improper. The die had been cast.
Popular whim could only derange and bungle monstrously the
majestic march of State policy in its new crusade for the peace of the
world. The irresistible State ideal got hold of the bowels of men.
Whereas up to this time, it had been irreproachable to be neutral in
word and deed, for the foreign policy of the State had so decided it,
henceforth it became the most arrant crime to remain neutral. The
Middle West, which had been soddenly pacifistic in our days of
neutrality, became in a few months just as soddenly bellicose, and in
its zeal for witch-burnings and its scent for enemies within gave
precedence to no section of the country. The herd-mind followed
faithfully the State-mind and, the agitation for a referendum being
soon forgotten, the country fell into the universal conclusion that,
since its Congress had formally declared the war, the nation itself
had in the most solemn and universal way devised and brought on
the entire affair. Oppression of minorities became justified on the
plea that the latter were perversely resisting the rationally
constructed and solemnly declared will of a majority of the nation.
The herd-coalescence of opinion which became inevitable the
moment the State had set flowing the war-attitudes became
interpreted as a pre-war popular decision, and disinclination to bow
to the herd was treated as a monstrously anti-social act. So that the
State, which had vigorously resisted the idea of a referendum and
clung tenaciously and, of course, with entire success to its autocratic
and absolute control of foreign policy, had the pleasure of seeing the
country, within a few months, given over to the retrospective
impression that a genuine referendum had taken place. When once
a country has lapped up these State attitudes, its memory fades; it
conceives itself not as merely accepting, but of having itself willed
the whole policy and technique of war. The significant classes with
their trailing satellites, identify themselves with the State, so that
what the State, through the agency of the Government, has willed,
this majority conceives itself to have willed.
All of which goes to show that the State represents all the autocratic,
arbitrary, coercive, belligerent forces within a social group, it is a sort
of complexus of everything most distasteful to the modern free
creative spirit, the feeling for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
War is the health of the State. Only when the State is at war does the
modern society function with that unity of sentiment, simple uncritical
patriotic devotion, coöperation of services, which have always been
the ideal of the State lover. With the ravages of democratic ideas,
however, the modern republic cannot go to war under the old
conceptions of autocracy and death-dealing belligerency. If a
successful animus for war requires a renaissance of State ideals,
they can only come back under democratic forms, under this
retrospective conviction of democratic control of foreign policy,
democratic desire for war, and particularly of this identification of the
democracy with the State. How unregenerate the ancient State may
be, however, is indicated by the laws against sedition, and by the
Government’s unreformed attitude on foreign policy. One of the first
demands of the more far-seeing democrats in the democracies of
the Alliance was that secret diplomacy must go. The war was seen
to have been made possible by a web of secret agreements between
States, alliances that were made by Governments without the
shadow of popular support or even popular knowledge, and vague,
half-understood commitments that scarcely reached the stage of a
treaty or agreement, but which proved binding in the event. Certainly,
said these democratic thinkers, war can scarcely be avoided unless
this poisonous underground system of secret diplomacy is
destroyed, this system by which a nation’s power, wealth and
manhood may be signed away like a blank check to an allied nation
to be cashed in at some future crisis. Agreements which are to affect
the lives of whole peoples must be made between peoples and not
by Governments, or at least by their representatives in the full glare
of publicity and criticism.
Such a demand for “democratic control of foreign policy” seemed
axiomatic. Even if the country had been swung into war by steps
taken secretly and announced to the public only after they had been
consummated, it was felt that that attitude of the American State
towards foreign policy was only a relic of the bad old days and must
be superseded in the new order. The American President himself,
the liberal hope of the world, had demanded, in the eyes of the
world, open diplomacy, agreements freely and openly arrived at. Did
this mean a genuine transference of power in this most crucial of
State functions from Government to people? Not at all. When the
question recently came to a challenge in Congress, and the
implications of open discussion were somewhat specifically
discussed, and the desirabilities frankly commended, the President
let his disapproval be known in no uncertain way. No one ever
accused Mr. Wilson of not being a State idealist, and whenever
democratic aspirations swung ideals too far out of the State orbit, he
could be counted on to react vigorously. Here was a clear case of
conflict between democratic idealism and the very crux of the
concept of the State. However unthinkingly he might have been led
on to encourage open diplomacy in his liberalizing programme, when
its implication was made vivid to him, he betrayed how mere a tool
the idea had been in his mind to accentuate America’s redeeming
rôle. Not in any sense as a serious pragmatic technique had he
thought of a genuinely open diplomacy. And how could he? For the
last stronghold of State power is foreign policy. It is in foreign policy
that the State acts most concentratedly as the organized herd, acts
with fullest sense of aggressive power, acts with freest arbitrariness.
In foreign policy, the State is most itself. States, with reference to
each other, may be said to be in a continual state of latent war. The
“armed truce,” a phrase so familiar before 1914, was an accurate
description of the normal relation of States when they are not at war.
Indeed, it is not too much to say that the normal relation of States is
war. Diplomacy is a disguised war, in which States seek to gain by
barter and intrigue, by the cleverness of wits, the objectives which
they would have to gain more clumsily by means of war. Diplomacy
is used while the States are recuperating from conflicts in which they
have exhausted themselves. It is the wheedling and the bargaining
of the worn-out bullies as they rise from the ground and slowly
restore their strength to begin fighting again. If diplomacy had been a
moral equivalent for war, a higher stage in human progress, an
inestimable means of making words prevail instead of blows,
militarism would have broken down and given place to it. But since it
is a mere temporary substitute, a mere appearance of war’s energy
under another form, a surrogate effect is almost exactly proportioned
to the armed force behind it. When it fails, the recourse is immediate
to the military technique whose thinly veiled arm it has been. A
diplomacy that was the agency of popular democratic forces in their
non-State manifestations would be no diplomacy at all. It would be
no better than the Railway or Education Commissions that are sent
from one country to another with rational constructive purpose. The
State, acting as a diplomatic-military ideal, is eternally at war. Just as
it must act arbitrarily and autocratically in time of war, it must act in
time of peace in this particular rôle where it acts as a unit. Unified
control is necessarily autocratic control. Democratic control of foreign
policy is therefore a contradiction in terms. Open discussion destroys
swiftness and certainty of action. The giant State is paralyzed. Mr.
Wilson retains his full ideal of the State at the same time that he
desires to eliminate war. He wishes to make the world safe for
democracy as well as safe for diplomacy. When the two are in
conflict, his clear political insight, his idealism of the State, tells him
that it is the naïver democratic values that must be sacrificed. The
world must primarily be made safe for diplomacy. The State must not
be diminished.
What is the State essentially? The more closely we examine it, the
more mystical and personal it becomes. On the Nation we can put
our hand as a definite social group, with attitudes and qualities exact
enough to mean something. On the Government we can put our
hand as a certain organization of ruling functions, the machinery of
law-making and law-enforcing. The Administration is a recognizable
group of political functionaries, temporarily in charge of the
government. But the State stands as an idea behind them all,
eternal, sanctified, and from it Government and Administration
conceive themselves to have the breath of life. Even the nation,
especially in times of war—or at least, its significant classes—
considers that it derives its authority, and its purpose from the idea of
the State. Nation and State are scarcely differentiated, and the
concrete, practical, apparent facts are sunk in the symbol. We
reverence not our country but the flag. We may criticize ever so
severely our country, but we are disrespectful to the flag at our peril.
It is the flag and the uniform that make men’s heart beat high and fill
them with noble emotions, not the thought of and pious hopes for
America as a free and enlightened nation.
It cannot be said that the object of emotion is the same, because the
flag is the symbol of the nation, so that in reverencing the American
flag we are reverencing the nation. For the flag is not a symbol of the
country as a cultural group, following certain ideals of life, but solely
a symbol of the political State, inseparable from its prestige and
expansion. The flag is most intimately connected with military
achievement, military memory. It represents the country not in its
intensive life, but in its far-flung challenge to the world. The flag is
primarily the banner of war; it is allied with patriotic anthem and
holiday. It recalls old martial memories. A nation’s patriotic history is
solely the history of its wars, that is, of the State in its health and
glorious functioning. So in responding to the appeal of the flag, we
are responding to the appeal of the State, to the symbol of the herd
organized as an offensive and defensive body, conscious of its
prowess and its mystical herd-strength.
Even those authorities in the present Administration, to whom has
been granted autocratic control over opinion, feel, though they are
scarcely able to philosophize over, this distinction. It has been
authoritatively declared that the horrid penalties against seditious
opinion must not be construed as inhibiting legitimate, that is,
partisan criticism of the Administration. A distinction is made
between the Administration and the Government. It is quite
accurately suggested by this attitude that the Administration is a
temporary band of partisan politicians in charge of the machinery of
Government, carrying out the mystical policies of State. The manner
in which they operate this machinery may be freely discussed and
objected to by their political opponents. The Governmental
machinery may also be legitimately altered, in case of necessity.
What may not be discussed or criticized is the mystical policy itself or
the motives of the State in inaugurating such a policy. The President,
it is true, has made certain partisan distinctions between candidates
for office on the ground of support or non-support of the
Administration, but what he meant was really support or non-support
of the State policy as faithfully carried out by the Administration.
Certain of the Administration measures were devised directly to
increase the health of the State, such as the Conscription and the
Espionage laws. Others were concerned merely with the machinery.
To oppose the first was to oppose the State and was therefore not
tolerable. To oppose the second was to oppose fallible human
judgment, and was therefore, though to be deprecated, not to be
wholly interpreted as political suicide.
The distinction between Government and State, however, has not
been so carefully observed. In time of war it is natural that
Government as the seat of authority should be confused with the
State or the mystic source of authority. You cannot very well injure a
mystical idea which is the State, but you can very well interfere with
the processes of Government. So that the two become identified in
the public mind, and any contempt for or opposition to the workings
of the machinery of Government is considered equivalent to
contempt for the sacred State. The State, it is felt, is being injured in
its faithful surrogate, and public emotion rallies passionately to
defend it. It even makes any criticism of the form of Government a
crime.
The inextricable union of militarism and the State is beautifully
shown by those laws which emphasize interference with the Army
and Navy as the most culpable of seditious crimes. Pragmatically, a
case of capitalistic sabotage, or a strike in war industry would seem
to be far more dangerous to the successful prosecution of the war
than the isolated and ineffectual efforts of an individual to prevent
recruiting. But in the tradition of the State ideal, such industrial
interference with national policy is not identified as a crime against
the State. It may be grumbled against; it may be seen quite rationally
as an impediment of the utmost gravity. But it is not felt in those
obscure seats of the herd-mind which dictate the identity of crime
and fix their proportional punishments. Army and Navy, however, are
the very arms of the State; in them flows its most precious life-blood.
To paralyze them is to touch the very State itself. And the majesty of
the State is so sacred that even to attempt such a paralysis is a
crime equal to a successful stroke. The will is deemed sufficient.
Even though the individual in his effort to impede recruiting should
utterly and lamentably fail, he shall be in no wise spared. Let the
wrath of the State descend upon him for his impiety! Even if he does
not try any overt action, but merely utters sentiments that may
incidentally in the most indirect way cause some one to refrain from
enlisting, he is guilty. The guardians of the State do not ask whether
any pragmatic effect flowed out of this evil will or desire. It is enough
that the will is present. Fifteen or twenty years in prison is not
deemed too much for such sacrilege.
Such attitudes and such laws, which affront every principle of human
reason, are no accident, nor are they the result of hysteria caused by
the war. They are considered just, proper, beautiful by all the classes
which have the State ideal, and they express only an extreme of
health and vigor in the reaction of the State to its non-friends.
Such attitudes are inevitable as arising from the devotees of the
State. For the State is a personal as well as a mystical symbol, and it
can only be understood by tracing its historical origin. The modern
State is not the national and intelligent product of modern men
desiring to live harmoniously together with security of life, property
and opinion. It is not an organization which has been devised as
pragmatic means to a desired social end. All the idealism with which
we have been instructed to endow the State is the fruit of our
retrospective imaginations. What it does for us in the way of security
and benefit of life, it does incidentally as a by-product and
development of its original functions, and not because at any time
men or classes in the full possession of their insight and intelligence
have desired that it be so. It is very important that we should
occasionally lift the incorrigible veil of that ex post facto idealism by
which we throw a glamor of rationalization over what is, and pretend
in the ecstasies of social conceit that we have personally invented
and set up for the glory of God and man the hoary institutions which
we see around us. Things are what they are, and come down to us
with all their thick encrustations of error and malevolence. Political
philosophy can delight us with fantasy and convince us who need
illusion to live that the actual is a fair and approximate copy—full of
failings, of course, but approximately sound and sincere—of that
ideal society which we can imagine ourselves as creating. From this
it is a step to the tacit assumption that we have somehow had a
hand in its creation and are responsible for its maintenance and
sanctity.
Nothing is more obvious, however, than that every one of us comes
into society as into something in whose creation we had not the
slightest hand. We have not even the advantage of consciousness
before we take up our careers on earth. By the time we find
ourselves here we are caught in a network of customs and attitudes,
the major directions of our desires and interests have been stamped
on our minds, and by the time we have emerged from tutelage and
reached the years of discretion when we might conceivably throw
our influence to the reshaping of social institutions, most of us have
been so molded into the society and class we live in that we are
scarcely aware of any distinction between ourselves as judging,
desiring individuals and our social environment. We have been
kneaded so successfully that we approve of what our society
approves, desire what our society desires, and add to the group our
own passional inertia against change, against the effort of reason,
and the adventure of beauty.
Every one of us, without exception, is born into a society that is
given, just as the fauna and flora of our environment are given.
Society and its institutions are, to the individual who enters it, as
much naturalistic phenomena as is the weather itself. There is
therefore, no natural sanctity in the State any more than there is in
the weather. We may bow down before it, just as our ancestors
bowed before the sun and moon, but it is only because something in
us unregenerate finds satisfaction in such an attitude, not because
there is anything inherently reverential in the institution worshipped.
Once the State has begun to function, and a large class finds its
interest and its expression of power in maintaining the State, this
ruling class may compel obedience from any uninterested minority.
The State thus becomes an instrument by which the power of the
whole herd is wielded for the benefit of a class. The rulers soon learn
to capitalize the reverence which the State produces in the majority,
and turn it into a general resistance towards a lessening of their
privileges. The sanctity of the State becomes identified with the
sanctity of the ruling class and the latter are permitted to remain in
power under the impression that in obeying and serving them, we
are obeying and serving society, the nation, the great collectivity of
all of us.
An analysis of the State would take us back to the beginnings of
society, to the complex of religious and personal and herd-impulses
which has found expression in so many forms. What we are
interested in is the American State as it behaves and as Americans
behave towards it in this twentieth century, and to understand that,
we have to go no further back than the early English monarchy of
which our American republic is the direct descendant. How straight
and true is that line of descent almost nobody realizes. Those
persons who believe in the sharpest distinction between democracy
and monarchy can scarcely appreciate how a political institution may
go through so many transformations and yet remain the same. Yet a
swift glance must show us that in all the evolution of the English

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