In particular, a FRACAS system supports later analyses, and those analyses impose data requirements. Unfortunately, the lack of careful consideration of the backward flow from decision to analysis to model to required data too often leads to inadequate data collection systems and missing essential information. Understanding user requirements involves eliciting information https://www.globalcloudteam.com/ about functional requirements, constraints (e.g., mass, power consumption, spatial footprint, life cycle cost), and needs that correspondent to RAM requirements. From these emerge system requirements that should include specifications for reliability, maintainability, and availability, and each should be conditioned on the projected operating environments.
Because of the rapidly increasing integration of computers into products and systems used by consumers, industry, governments, and the military, reliability must consider both hardware, and software. The application of this method is particularly significant if carried out before the start-up of a large plant. Greater precision in the definition of the maintenance plan in fact leads to a better estimate of the maintenance budget which is the fundamental tool for the technical-managerial choices of maintenance. The FMA method can also form the starting point for defining the economic terms of comparison for the possible costs of the works for improvements and modifications to the plant that one intends to carry out. In this case, the application of the method represents an investment that produces immediate benefits. Finally, the FMA method can be used to define the technical specifications of maintainability of the various types of equipment that the engineering, in the plant design phase.
Primary References
Also patching update mechanisms could be implemented to improve the overall performance of the system during runtime, these mechanisms are often referred to as live upgrade or live update mechanisms. Some of these military standards have been dropped but they still contain useful background information. Engineering personnel during the program effort to result in maximum exchange of information common to all disciplines. Assets, equipment, assemblies, and sub-assemblies should be identifiable from each other to facilitate communication and record-keeping. Asset operators achieve this by assigning unique and meaningful tags to assets and components.
Read the first chapter from Building Maintainable Software, Java Edition, to learn exactly what maintainability means and how it has an impact on business. This takes maintenance staff less time to figure out what they have to do and which tools they may need. Preferably, do this using software or an app so they can access that information anywhere. The term maintainability in the industrial field can mean on the one hand the ease with which it is possible to intervene on an asset and on the other the probability that corrective action will be necessary for a given period of time.
Products and services
As mentioned, the FMA calculation method is to be considered suitable for those assets that are fundamental within the production plants. It is good practice to standardize the type of components and diversify the equipment as little as possible in order to have a higher level of interchangeability. The components subject to disassembly for maintenance operations must be designed so as to be easily transportable. Another important metric to consider when talking about the maintainability of a plant is that relating to the average time between two maintenance interventions , i.e. the MTBM. The purpose of maintainability is to measure the possibility of restoring assets to normal operating states after maintenance.
The systems in the benchmark are ranked based on their metric quality profiles. Figure 1-1 shows three examples of unit size quality profiles (print readers can view full-color figures for this and the other quality profiles that follow in our repository for this book). Maintainability needs to be addressed from the very start of a development project. We understand that it is hard to see whether an individual “violation” of the guidelines in this book influences the overall maintainability of the system. That is why all developers must be disciplined and follow the guidelines to achieve a system that is maintainable overall. Therefore, your individual contribution is of great importance to the whole.
Why are these parameters studied together?
The base which houses the driving motor is designed to separate from the jars which are easily removable and replaceable if blades get damaged . Instead of using multiple different types of parts and components, it is recommended to minimize variety among parts in order to minimize inventory, tooling, and training requirements. RBDs are often nested, with one RBD serving as a component in a higher-level model. These hierarchical models allow the analyst to have the appropriate resolution of detail while still permitting abstraction. All these models are abstractions of reality, and so at best approximations to reality.
- Where z is a dimensionless time that represents the degree of aging, which is defined as follows.
- Collectively, they affect both the utility and the life-cycle costs of a product or system.
- It must be accessible, i.e. be designed in such a way that each of its parts allows easy inspections and repairs.
- Our software eliminates the paperwork, so you can spend more time on crucial work, reduce downtime, and increase efficiency.
- Where Q is the cumulative distribution function for probability of being repaired, i.e. probability of failure, wait, and repair, which can be calculated as follows.
- That is, the shorter the MTTR, the more likely you are to restore a damaged asset.
By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge that you have read and understand our privacy policy and code of conduct. Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience. Typically this is a greater consideration for a service rather than a desktop or mobile application, although those have manageability concerns as well . I have read a few definitions for maintainability and manageability but they sound pretty similar to me… The purpose of this phase is to verify how much the design has taken into account the needs of maintenance. Where z is a dimensionless time that represents the degree of aging, which is defined as follows.
Maintainability In Design
The acronym RAM combines the three technical terms to signify a framework in which the assets are designed and operated using best practices to minimize downtime and life cycle costs. Some general-purpose statistical analysis software includes functions for reliability data analysis. SuperSmith is a more specialized package that fits reliability models to life data and can be extended for reliability growth analysis and other analyses. They can also be extended to include the effect of environmental conditions on system life. Such extended models can in turn be used for accelerated life testing , where a system is deliberately and carefully overstressed to induce failures more quickly. This is often the only way to obtain estimates of the life of highly reliable products in a reasonable amount of time.
After the next section, which discusses common misunderstandings about maintainability, we explain how quality profiles are used to measure the maintainability of a system. SIG has collected empirical evidence that issue resolution and enhancements are twice as fast in systems with above-average maintainability than in systems with below-average maintainability. A factor of two is a significant quantity in the practice of enterprise systems. The time it takes to resolve issues and make an enhancement is on the order of days or weeks. It is not the difference between fixing 5 bugs or 10 in an hour; it is the difference between being the first one to the market with a new product, or seeing your competitor months ahead of you.
What does maintainability mean?
Systems that report only on repair actions and outage incidents may not be sufficient for this purpose. Engineering provides inputs to alternative design concepts, support concepts, subcontractor/supplier proposals, and analysis of the effect of alternative manufacturing processes on maintainability. Reliability, maintainability, and availability are three system attributes that are of great interest to systems engineers, logisticians, and users. Collectively, they affect both the utility and the life-cycle costs of a product or system. The origins of contemporary reliability engineering can be traced to World War II. The discipline’s first concerns were electronic and mechanical components. However, current trends point to a dramatic rise in the number of industrial, military, and consumer products with integrated computing functions.
By understanding the reliability of a system, development can avoid wasting time improving availability beyond what the customer can appreciate. Service level indicators bundle metrics such as latency and availability into a more impactful measurement. Then, service level objectives can be set at the threshold for customers to become dissatisfied.
Maintainability vs. Reliability
Setting maintenance benchmarks and capital expenditure allocations to increase equipment uptime may be cost-effective. Tracking the frequency of failures or time between failures on an individual asset also can lead to better root cause analysis and overall system improvements. There may be several alternatives that may have what is maintainability to be studied in a trade format. The maintainability engineer then works with the selected item principal engineer for scheduled maintenance time reduction. As a last resort, maintainability figures may be reallocated and maintainability margins attacked or margin values exchanged in other parts of the architecture.