Abstract: A system and method for detecting trends in time-managed lifetime data for products shipped in distinct vintages within a time window. Data is consolidated from several sources and represented in a form amenable to detection of trends using a criterion for measuring failure. A weight is applied to the failure measures, the weight increasing over the time the products are in the time window. A function of weighted failures is used to define a severity index for proximity to an unacceptable level of failures, and an alarm signal is triggered at a threshold level that allows the level of false alarms to be pre-set.

Abstract: A method for detecting a hazard rate increase in time-managed lifetime data includes specifying acceptable and unacceptable levels of a shape parameter, summarizing rows of a data table by pre-specified criterion and consolidating the data table into a less refined block representation, computing bias-adjusted estimators of the shape parameter for every block in the data table, computing weights wi, i=1, 2, . . . , N corresponding to the estimators ?i, the weights wi decreasing as the variance of ?i increases, computing a threshold h to be applied to a set s1, s2, . . . , sN defined by s0=0, si=max[0, si-1+wi (?i?k)], I=1,2, . . . ,N, and applying the threshold to the set s1, s2, . . . , sN that was observed and establishing whether smax>h, where smax=max [s1, s2, . . . , sN].

Abstract: A system and method for detecting trends in time-managed lifetime data for products shipped in distinct vintages within a time window. Data is consolidated from several sources and represented in a form amenable to detection of trends using a criterion for measuring failure. A weight is applied to the failure measures, the weight increasing over the time the products are in the time window. A function of weighted failures is used to define a severity index for proximity to an unacceptable level of failures, and an alarm signal is triggered at a threshold level that allows the level of false alarms to be pre-set.