A new approach to gathering failure behavior information about mechanical components based on expert knowledge

This paper presents a possibility with which the reliability knowledge of maintenance employees can be used in order to receive reliability data that can be used to do simulations or further calculations. Using the presented methodology opens up a big source of information. The use of employee knowledge entails the processing of imprecise data, as the knowledge is not given in the form of a failure time plot, but in the form of verbal expressions and specific information. The paper deals with the data format and precision of expert-based information. A methodology is presented which enables the transformation of certain employee (further called experts) information into reliability data. Apart from that the paper also shows the influence of imprecision of expert information and how to handle this imprecision in order to get applicable results. As a finishing subject the paper also provides a possibility with which the deviations of expert information from reality can be estimated dependent on the expert statement itself. With that approach one can tax the trustability of expert information.