STM Article Repository

Aeronautical navigation systems installed at specific locations within Saudi Arabia report the actual observed data of the times to failure (TTFs) for many types of engineering elements made by some typical international highly-acclaimed manufacturers. There is a need to compare these observed data to the estimated data provided by the manufacturers themselves. The paper gathers a lot of data on the actual failure instances of many components produced by a variety of manufacturers and installed at different locations within the extensive area of Saudi Arabia. These data are used to calculate the mean times between failures for these components. The paper points to an inadvertent discrepancy between these data and the corresponding mean times between failures (MTBFs) suggested by some prominent manufacturers. Such suggested MTBFs are typically optimistic and unrealistically high irrespective of the elements, the location, and the manufactures. The work reported herein is a preliminary assessment of this phenomenon that might lead to its theoretical modeling and subsequent understanding.