Reliability growth testing

[123help]

Hello,
I am a new reliability engineer ( BS Electrical Engineering) with no previous reliability experience. It is a new area of exploration, and I am learning a lot through this website and the discussion forum. I want to pursue this field because it is very interesting and fun.
I have a question and hopefully some body will answer me. how do I calculate the Initial MTBF of the system. I am using the Test - fix-test of the crow extended model. I know there is a formula
gamma function{(1+1/beta)}/(lambda)^1/beta.
what is the gamma function?
There is only limited reference about it on the website.
Please help.
Thanks,

[Tarik El-Azzouzi]

the gamma function is mentioned in
http://www.weibull.com/LifeDataWeb/weibull_statistical_properties.htm

[engrafa]

Hi!

I want to implement a reliability growth system in the medical products.

Could I monitoring the reliability system just using the first failure distribution? I intend to use field data of the components to modeling its life distribution and, then, to model the system's life distribution.

I appreciate the helps!

[Pantelis]

Yes you could... however thats not really reliability growth... all you are doing is getting a distribution for the first time to failure.

[engrafa]

Hi!

I understand...but, if I've just interested in to increase the time of first failure, even to repairable system, this approach could be use, right?

Thanks again!

[Pantelis]

Under that scenario yes it is correct.

[engrafa]

Thanks to help!