Masked Failure Data

We discuss life-testing situations in which some of the failures are not identified as being due to a single cause, but are rather explained by one of the causes in a group. Failures of this type are called masked. Within this framework, we discuss the problems of modeling, estimation, and diagnostics. Such problems involve, for example, identification of survival curves for individual causes, or estimation of parameters related to conditions under which masking occurs. Another class of problems is related to the impact of masking on root-cause analysis of individual failures. We also discuss the impact of masking on quality and reliability management issues. Keywords: censoring; competing risks; life testing; reliability; root-cause analysis

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