Simulation and calculation of reliability performance and maintenance costs

This paper provides a short description of an extensive method for simulation and calculation of reliability, availability and maintenance costs of a product (system, function, equipment, mechanism, part, etc). Our method helps the designer to determine at an early stage of the design what level of reliability performance and corrective and preventive maintenance costs can be achieved under the selected design solution, maintenance and operation strategies, and maintenance resources. The versatility of the method promotes also the introduction of expertise from areas that strongly affect the success of the design process, namely the manufacturing, testing, operation, and maintenance. RAMoptim software has been developed to implement this method. The reliability and availability obtained from RAMoptim should be compared with the requirements, set, for example, by using our allocation method RAMalloc. If these or other defined requirements have not been achieved, the designer must return to the drawing table to consider other solutions. Further, our method enables also repair time delays due to external causes. E.g., using StockOptim one can assess the delay caused by the lack of spare parts. Finally, the development of the method and the related software continues. The effect of preventive maintenance(PM) (e.g. condition monitoring and diagnostic resources) on failure tendency is a particularly important and challenging subject for further research.