There are different formulas for these two basic scenarios which can be combined to produce an accurate system

level MTBF result. Serial Failures: Let's do the serial failure case first. In this case, the failure of any one component will cause failure of the system. This may sometimes be illustrated as: A -> B -> C -> D to show the serial nature of the failure analysis. The comment by jeannot52 is basically correct for this case (but does not address the case with redundant components). However I find it much easier to describe (and compute) by introducing failures per million (lambda). For the remaining part of the answer: MTBF = mean time between failures (hours per failure) Lambda = failures per million hours F = failure rate or probability of failure in one hour R = reliability rate (probability of working in one hour) You can convert between MTBF and Lambda with the following equations: Lambda = 1,000,000 / MTBF MTBF = 1,000,000 / Lambda and assuming a constant failure rate (not necessarily true) F = Lambda / 1,000,000 or 1 / MTBF R = 1-F The reason I talk in terms of Lambda (failures per million hours) is you can still explain the comparisions - less failures per million is better, and the arithmetic is simpler (until you *have* to compute MTBF). So if you have four components, A, B, C, and D each with MTBF of 20,000, 10,000, 15,000, and 30,000 hours respectively, using this method, the MTBF of the system is calculated as: Lambda A = 1,000,000 / 20,000 = 50.0 Lambda B = 1,000,000 / 10,000 = 100.0 Lambda C = 1,000,000 / 15,000 = 66.67 Lambda D = 1,000,000 / 30,000 = 33.33 Lambda (composite system) = 50+100+66.67+33.33 = 250 MTBF (composite system) = 1,000,000 / 250 = 4,000 hours This is a relatively simple example. A system 10's or hundreds of components can be calculated in the same way. Redundant Components: If you have two components in parallel (e.g., dual power supplies) where a failure of both components is required to fail the system, the MTBF of the system is MUCH less than either component. I will do a simple example using both serial and parallel failures. Assume A and B both have MTBF of 100 hours or Lambda = 10,000. The failure rate F for A and B would then be 0.01 for each. For comparison, the serial solution has Lambda = 20,000 failures per million or MTBF = 50 hours. For the redundant case, the probability (F) that both items are failed at the same time is: F = FA * FB F = 0.01 * 0.01 F = 0.0001

Solving for lambda gets Lambda = 100 or MTBF = 10,000 hours So there is a substantial improvement in reliability when using redundant components. Note that if you have serial components before / after the redundant components, you still need to handle those in series with the redundant components. A composite system: If you have into pieces usually end compute the both serial / parallel components, break up the system and do the lambda calculations as serial or parallel. I up with several serial items to add at the end and then overall system MTBF value.