Approximation of Weight Numbers for Weibull Least Squares Parameter Estimation

Abstract

The failure behavior of component batches is often characterized by its statistical distribution. For many failure processes the Weibu11-2 distribution is adequate. The relevant parameters can be estimated by the Weighted Least Squares (WLS) method. This method requires a calculation of weights that is inconvenient to implement in spreadsheets and light-calculating devices such as mobile phones and tablets. The present paper presents a procedure to accurately estimate these weights which enables convenient WLS parameter estimation even with standard office software. The procedure is to be built into Incident Management freeware for timely evaluation even after a very few failures within a larger component population.