Patent ID: 7966151

Claim:
A method for analyzing operation of at least one machine, comprising: collecting operation data for a machine over a plurality of predetermined time periods, the operation data including the respective time for a plurality of events that together form a set of mutually exclusive events that describe operation of the machine, the set of events including cycle events, starve events, blocked events, and down events; determining for each of the predetermined time periods whether the machine is in an “ON” state or an “OFF” state based at least in part on the collected operation data; removing data for the OFF states from at least a portion of the collected operation data, thereby generating a filtered data set; and generating reliability information for the machine based at least in part on the filtered data set, thereby facilitating predictions of future machine operation, the step of generating reliability information including: determining a reliability parameter based at least in part on the down events in the filtered data set; choosing a probability density function; and fitting the reliability parameter to the chosen probability density function.