Pyrotechnic device reliability

Abstract

The Naval Weapons Support Center is planning to implement a bonus system to improve the reliability of pyrotechnic devices. The measure of effectiveness that they wish to use to determine how to award bonuses is the reliability of pyrotechnic devices. The data available to estimate this reliability is based on the current sampling inspection plan in which devices are tested in different environments. The models which include both dependence and independence assumptions between the outcomes of these tests are implemented and estimates of overall reliability along with 95 % lower confidence bound are obtained. The 95 % lower confidence bounds are found by bootstrapping. Using these estimates, models for making the decision to award bonuses are discussed and studied using Monte Carlo simulation.