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I just returned from the ReliaSoft ARS Conference. I expected and found that only about 10% of the presentations dealt in some way with maintenance. 90% focused on product design and manufacturing. Reliability belongs in maintenance too. Conversations with folks from ReliaSoft indicated that they are looking more and more in that direction.
There was an encouraging excellent presentation, in this vein, on FRACAS from Ken Millspaugh at Ratheon Space and Airborn Systems. FRACAS extends reliability from design to the service phase of a product’s life. Every failure in service is an opportunity to improve the product’s reliability. FRACAS is the engineering process to identify and implement these improvements.
FRACAS keeps meticulous track of all platform and module information so that the problem leading to failure can be isolated. This information includes electronic elapsted time indicators (ETIs), electronic serial numbers, temperature sensor readings, Operational Flight Program (OFP) version, time stamped Built-In-Test (BIT) data. The information surrounding the repair of the failed product is captured at the depot. It starts with the incoming inspection, includes all testing, includes all hardware replacement, and ends with the “final acceptance test”. ReliaSoft’s XFRACAS that controls the process has shifted the expended engineering resources from predominantly data management to predominantly engineering analysis.
A really interesting part of Ken’s presentation dealt with high reliability systems and the difficulty in tracking their reliability growth. Infant mortality failures need to be separated in this analysis. The FRACAS process must distinguish “real” root causes from infant mortality and thereby avoid the possibility of improper reliability reporting.
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