Patent ID: 7376478

Claim:
A method for determining a mean time between failures (MTBF) value for a repairable product that corresponds to a target customer perceived reliability for the product by accounting for process losses incurred during the product's lifecycle downstream of component part selection, said method comprising: determining, for each of a plurality of phases of the product's lifecycle, a phase-attributable failure rate multiplier of each of said respective phases, including at least a box-of-parts phase and a customer use phase; utilizing said phase-attributable failure rate multipliers, calculating a normalized MTBF multiplier for each of said plurality of phases of the product's lifecyclc based on a MTBF multiplier that is normalized to unity for said box-of-parts phase; and determining a target box-of-parts MTBF based on the target customer perceived reliability adjusted in consideration of said normalized MTBF multiplier for said customer use phase.