Failure-free life in reliability modeling

The use of failure-free life in reliability analysis and modeling has often been overlooked. This is partly due to the lack of evidence from real life examples in which failure-free life could be a dominating factor in decision making. We give two motivations for using failure-free life in reliability modeling. Then, we present a real life case to illustrate the importance of including failure-free life in reliability analysis and product/process design and development. Methods for detecting and estamating failure-free life, beyond the current graphical method, are also presented. In particular, we provide two simple Excel spreadsheet templates for performing estimation. Numerical experience shows that the algorithms work well in practice.