Mean time to repair


Mean time to repair is a basic measure of the maintainability of repairable items. It represents the average time required to repair a failed component or device. Expressed mathematically, it is the total corrective maintenance time for failures divided by the total number of corrective maintenance actions for failures during a given period of time. It generally does not include lead time for parts not readily available or other Administrative or Logistic Downtime.
In fault-tolerant design, MTTR is usually considered to also include the time the fault is latent. If a latent fault goes undetected until an independent failure occurs, the system may not be able to recover.
MTTR is often part of a maintenance contract, where a system whose MTTR is 24 hours is generally more valuable than for one of 7 days if mean time between failures is equal, because its Operational Availability is higher.
However, in the context of a maintenance contract, it would be important to distinguish whether MTTR is meant to be a measure of the mean time between the point at which the failure is first discovered until the point at which the equipment returns to operation, or only a measure of the elapsed time between the point where repairs actually begin until the point at which the equipment returns to operation. For example, a system with a service contract guaranteeing a mean time to "repair" of 24 hours, but with additional part lead times, administrative delays, and technician transportation delays adding up to a mean of 6 days, would not be any more attractive than another system with a service contract guaranteeing a mean time to "recovery" of 7 days.