Crow

Dear Frog of Knowledge,

Can you explain the Crow-AMSAA graph on Novinium’s web site at novinium.com/lessons.aspx?  How do I compare Novinium’s post-injection reliability to that of UTILX?

Not wanting to eat crow,

‘raven Reliability

 Dear ‘raven-

What a great play on words! My fans that compose creative questions get to move right to the front of the queue.  You are justified in “c’raving” reliability. I took the opportunity your inquiry provided to update the Novinium failure statistics through August 10, 2011. I present those statistics in the chart nearby. Crow was a guy that worked for the “Army Material Systems Analysis Activity” or AMSAA.  Crow developed the statistical model that now bears his name and that of his employer.  Crow-AMSAA or “C-A” for short is widely recognized as a preferred model to predict the reliability of complex systems that experience multiple failure mechanisms.

The x-axis is the product of the feet of cable that have been treated by Novinium and the years that have elapsed since treatment.  For example, if a 328 foot (100 meter) length of cable was treated three year ago, its contribution to the cumulative treated would be 984 feet*years.  The x-axis is logarithmic.  Plotted against the y-axis are the failures – 56 in total.  A least squares regression of the failures provides a slope, or beta, of 0.64.  A beta less than 1 means the failure rate is decreasing.  Process and chemistry improvements, together with the improving mastery of the Novinium’s craft workers, make Novinium technology more and more reliable.  That’s not to say that when Novinium began injection operations over six years ago post-injection performance was unacceptable.  Novinium started where the old technology, invented by Novinium founders, reached a reliability plateau. When I did this same C-A analysis nine months ago (November 2010) the beta was 0.72.  So, not only is the failure rate decreasing, but the rate of decrease is accelerating!  About 99.4% of all the cables, which Novinium have treated, remain in reliable service.  This is at least twice as good as the other guys!

With regard to how you can compare Novinium reliability with that of UtilX, I can only provide you with some frog-advice. As a circuit owner you should demand that UtilX publish its total failure statistics – not just a few select circuit owners, the whole data set.  Then circuit owners would be able to make an apples-to-apples comparison. Don’t hold your breath, when NEETRAC, their sponsoring circuit owners, and other industry leaders invited UtilX to participate in a side-by-side laboratory experiment, UtilX helped craft an experiment, but withdrew their participation when the experiment actually began.  By the way, that experiment is complete and included the only rejuvenation firm willing to share their post-injection results in a truly independent experiment – that would be Novinium. UtilX demurred, citing “business and commercial reasons.”

No need to crow when you can croak,

T. B. Frog