Reliability Assessment of Centrifugal Pumps Using Warranty Drive Data as a Field Fault

This study presents a reliability assessment of centrifugal pumps utilizing warranty data to analyze field failures, emphasizing the importance of reliability in determining product quality and competitiveness. Many manufacturers, often lacking adequate resources, launch products without proper reliability assessments, leading to elevated repair costs associated with warranty returns. This research capitalizes on warranty data as a valuable and cost-effective means to evaluate product reliability and implement continuous improvement. It specifically examines the reliability of hydraulic pumps produced by a leisure equipment company with over 50 years of experience, employing failure data collected by Costumer Service. The Statistical Theory of Reliability was applied through probabilistic modeling up to the first failure, with adjustments made to the Weibull model via Maximum Likelihood estimation and validation through the Anderson-Darling test. The analysis utilized MINITAB® software (closed source) and was replicated in RStudio (open source), providing an accessible alternative for data analysis. Given the uncertainty and censoring inherent in the warranty data, results from the Weibull model were compared to those from the Kaplan-Meier model, underscoring the necessity for refinement in failure data interpretation. Complementary tools such as Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) and Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) were employed to identify underlying causes and effects of failures. Findings revealed a reliability rate of approximately 40% halfway through the warranty period; however, this may not accurately reflect true product reliability due to data limitations. The study advocates for future research to enhance the methodology and explore its applicability for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), ultimately promoting a culture of reliability with significant social impact.

Keywords: Reliability, Warranty, Field failure, Centrifugal pumps, Pumps, Weibull, Kaplan-Meier, Parametric modeling, Non-parametric modeling, FMEA, FTA.