Developing a reliability, availability and maintainability process

The Department of Defense (DoD) has put an increased focus on reliability during system acquisition and development. This is due to historically poor reliability performance which has significantly increased sustainment costs for systems that have been built over the last 25 years. The Director of the Department of Operational Test and Evaluation has written a memorandum, dated June 30, 2010 with subject “State of Reliability” discussing these concerns. Training time for a new reliability engineer can be reduced by providing the engineer with a documented process guide for reliability engineering activities. This process guide provides guidance for each reliability task, and relates the task to the DoD acquisition life cycle phase, which enhances the training for new graduates as well as experienced reliability engineers that lack exposure to DoD programs. Maintaining a standard set of modeling and simulation tools produces consistent analytical products and improves the efficiency within the organization by eliminating redundant modeling packages. Documenting the Reliability, Availability and Maintainability (RAM) process in a guide allows the reliability group to provide consistent and sound technical guidance to any DoD project. This process guide also reduces the transition time for RAM Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) when entering a new project that may be in a different phase of the DoD life cycle. The process guide also improves the awareness, at the program level, of the RAM efforts that are required to ensure reliability is integrated into product development.