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Component Reliability - Infant Mortality
Infant Mortality refers to a part that is successfully installed on an aircraft, passes an operational check, but fails within a few days. Usually, an infant mortality will appear within 10 to 20 flight hours or 2 to 3 days.
This 10 to 20 flight hour threshold indicates how long between the installation and when the problem occurs - not when the part is actually removed from the aircraft. After all, the captain may squawk the failure after five flight hours - yet the part may remain installed on an MEL (Minimum Equipment List) for up to ten days. In this instance, the part may have accumulated up to 100 flight hours before it is removed. If your program defines Infant Mortality as an installation less than 10 or 20 flight hours, you may be missing many potential Infant Mortality events.
The consequences of an Infant Mortality event are pretty much the same as a Bad From Stock incident. You are performing the same maintenance on the same aircraft twice within a short period of time. You have used two serviceable spares from stock - and you have two unserviceable parts that must cycle through your repair shop.
If you choose to track Infant Mortality events, consider setting the alert threshold high enough to cover the ones that may be affected by MEL - but don't set it too high. At some point, there is a tradeoff between the value of investigating these issues instead of resolving more pressing issues.
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