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1. Define the conditions of the failure mode to analyze and determine the failure usage scale.

For the failure mode to analyze, clearly define the conditions that cause this failure to occur and the failure usage scale by which product or system age is measured. This task, performed outside of the software, determines what failure data must be collected.

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2. Open or create the System file and then insert data sets.

A data set is inserted in the LDA Navigator for each collection of data points to analyze. To analyze many data sets with different distributions, you can first insert data set folders to better organize and manage them. For more information, see:

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3. For life data analysis (LDA), specify the data type.

For LDA, the data type affects which distribution and methods you can use for analysis. For more information, see Parametric Life Data Analysis (LDA). You specify the data type for LDA in the Weibull Parameters pane.

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4. Enter the data points to analyze.

For life data and degradation analysis, you enter the data points to analyze in the Weibull Data Points pane. For warranty analysis, you enter sales, returns, and forecast data in the multiple panes set up by the Warranty Data Set Wizard when you insert the data set. For more information, see Inserting a Warranty Data Set. For life data and warranty data sets, you can import data points.For more information, see Importing Data into a Weibull Data Set. For life data sets, you can also generate random data points. For more information, see Generating Random Data Points for a Data Set

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5. Specify the distribution and/or parameter values to use.

For a parametric life, reliability growth, or warranty data set, you specify the distribution parameter values in the Weibull Parameters pane. If you do not know the distribution, you can use best fit distribution analysis to determine which of the many supported distributions best fits the data points. For more information, see Finding the Best Fit Distribution for a Data Set.

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6. Specify the estimation parameters.

For a parametric life, reliability growth, or warranty data set, you specify the estimation parameters to use in the Weibull Advanced pane based on the computational time and the fit quality of the analysis line. For these and other analyses, you may also need to provide parameters in other panes.

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7. Calculate the data set and view results and the generated plot.

By default, Auto-Calculate data sets is selected under Weibull in the System file properties. In this case, life data sets are calculated as you enter data and parameter values. For other data set types, or if Auto-Calculate data sets is cleared for this module, you must initiate calculations, which you can quickly do by clicking Calculate in the title bar of a Parameters pane. To calculate other data set types or all data sets, you can press F8 or click Calculate in the standard toolbar. For more information, see Calculating Weibull Results. Once a data set is calculated, you can view generated plots in the Weibull Plot pane. If the plots indicate that your initial parameter values do not provide a good fit, you can change them and recalculate. Once plots indicate that parameter values are acceptable, you can use the resulting analysis to spot trends in the data set and accurately estimate future failures.

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8. Generate Weibull reports.

Generate Weibull reports. No Graph Template files are supplied with this module, and the Graph Wizard does not support the creation of Graph Template files for it.