Distinguishing MTBF from Useful Life in Reliability Claims
A 100,000-hour MTBF on a part with a five-year wear-out life is not a contradiction, and reading it as an eleven-year lifetime is the classic error. This node makes explicit that MTBF describes the flat region of the bathtub curve and says nothing about when wear-out begins — the misreading that turns a reliability specification into a false promise.
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A 100,000-hour MTBF on a part with a five-year wear-out life is not a contradiction, and reading it as an eleven-year lifetime is the classic error. This node makes explicit that MTBF describes the flat region of the bathtub curve and says nothing about when wear-out begins — the misreading that turns a reliability specification into a false promise.
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