Mean Time Between Repair

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What Does Mean Time Between Repair Mean?

Mean time between repair (MTBR) is one of several related metrics that helps to provide information on operating reliability for IT products and systems. MTBR is often defined as the average operating calendar time between required repairs for a given product or set of products.

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Techopedia Explains Mean Time Between Repair

Mean time between repair is closely related to some other similar benchmarking terms such as mean time between failure (MTBF) as well as mean time between maintenance (MTBM) and mean time between changes. All of these metrics work in similar ways, but all are subject to some interpretation, and most lack a standard definition that is universally applied. This leads to a lot of confusion in consumer reports that include MTBF or similar metrics.

For MTBR specifically, the protocol for this measurement seems to be counting the necessary instances of repairs during a given time period and dividing the latter number by the former. Mean time between repairs differs from MTBF in that MTBF typically counts only how long a product operates before failure, whereas MTBR would inherently include the time spent on repair, which can make a big difference in the final outcome.

In looking at MTBR and related terms it’s very important to know how each of these terms is used in any given industry and context. The way that MTBR is used in some IT analysis, for example, may be significantly different from how it is used in an industrial context for equipment such as pumps and other machines, or how it is used internally for the purposes of maintenance evaluation at a particular company.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist
Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.