Computer-aided maintainability in China

The goal of the industrial sponsored computer-aided maintainability design and analysis (CAMDA) program is to provide the engineering designer and maintainability engineer with a powerful computer software tool for maintainability design and analysis. With such a software tool, maintainability issues can be considered from the early stages of the design process, and possible maintainability problems can be identified early and avoided without costly design modifications. In current product design and development, maintainability activities are required according to maintainability related standards, and the applicable methods are also specified in standards. The primary objective of CAMDA is computerizing these methods. In addition to standard methods, some other technologies such as stochastic network technologies, artificial neural network technologies and computer animation technologies are also applied to maintainability prediction and analysis. It must be emphasized that CAMDA is not only a computer technology application research, but also an effective and practical software tool applicable to most product design and development programs, and it meets engineers' needs. So, the development of CAMDA is engineering-oriented. It will relieve designers and maintainability engineers from miscellaneous business, and improve product quality without significant increase in design cost.