Big R, easy M: If you do effective modeling and analysis

Abstract

As companies are striving to achieve profitable growth; they are recognizing the importance of system design requirements, where Reliability, Maintainability, Testability and Supportability (RM&S) are “Designed-In” during early design development, that support the product's final development, production, operation and sustainment. To meet this end, the integration of RM&S into Systems Engineering requirements must begin with a balanced, structured, and disciplined Integrated Product Team (IPT), proven processes, and an enterprise-wide integrated engineering development, modeling, and analysis environment. A major prerequisite to determining system reliability, maintainability, and supportability requirements is possessing a good understanding of the overall environment; i.e., the physical environment where the system will be deployed / operated and the culture (military / commercial / industrial / residential) of the operating agency, and this is where the development, modeling and analysis environment becomes crucial. The objective is to design, develop and support quality products that satisfy the user needs with measurable improvements to mission capability, operational availability and life cycle cost. This all requires RM&S practitioners who are involved in a program early enough to influence the design and who are supported in efforts to develop and manage design-to allocations of goals that are identified and correlated with customer operational needs. Analysis focused on early design trades, lessons learned, and operational mission environment testing, with “Test, Analyze and Fix” (TAAF) philosophy is at the heart of any innovative RM&S Program.