Lifetimes Prediction with Fuzzy Reasoning

Abstract

From the viewpoint of practical reliability assurance, we often need to predict lifetimes, even when we do not have enough data during infant life. The authors propose a new method which utilizes experts' knowledge with a fuzzy reasoning, and study the prediction errors using failure date in accordance with the Weibull distribution.As a result, they show that the proposed method enables us to infer lifetimes based on one or a few infant life data without likelihood functions. Another new hybrid method which combines the fuzzy reasoning method with the maximum likelihood method is also proposed.