Research Data on Maintainability

The dearth of research data on maintainability prevents objectivity in making design recommendations to reduce equipment down time. This paper summarizes the results of the few published attempts to determine experimentally the effects of equipment design variables upon only one source of down time, namely, fault localization time. All data are normalized and plotted as probability distributions on semilog paper to emphasize their apparent exponential nature. The results are compared with similar data on effects of training to indicate the efficiency of design considerations for maintainability. Finally, a plea is made for more research data in this important area.