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Received June 2006 Revised February 2007 Accepted May 2007

An overview on reliability, availability, maintainability and supportability (RAMS) engineering

S. Saraswat and G.S. Yadava
Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of RAMS engineering in industry and research. Design/methodology/approach A range of research articles (1988-2005) covering RAMS engineering is discussed to provide a practical and theoretical overview of RAMS engineering in industry and research. Findings The paper provides information about the current scenario and also about the past scenario of RAMS engineering in research and industry. Research limitations/implications This paper reviews much of the literature on RAMS engineering. The literature is collected from major journals and conference proceedings, the period covered is from 1988 to 2005. The authors have tried to make it reasonably comprehensive, but those papers which are not included were either inadvertently overlooked or considered peripheral to this survey. In the present work the authors have only considered those articles which have included two or more aspects of RAMS. Practical implications The paper is a very useful source of information for researchers working in the area of RAMS engineering. Originality/value This paper offers help to researchers in understanding the current and past status of RAMS. Keywords Maintenance, Research, Reliability management Paper type General review

International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management Vol. 25 No. 3, 2008 pp. 330-344 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0265-671X DOI 10.1108/02656710810854313

1. Introduction Modern technology has developed a tendency to design and manufacture equipment and systems of greater capital cost, sophistication, complexity, and capacity. The disastrous consequences of low availability and high maintenance cost of such systems led to the desire for high reliability, high maintainability, and low mean time to support. Due to design problems and poor product support, manufacturer equipment and systems are not able to meet these requirements. However with proper consideration of reliability, availability, maintainability and supportability (RAMS) in the design, manufacturing, and installation phase, the number of failure could be reduced and their consequences minimized. Various design techniques and concepts are available in literature (as described in numerous handbooks, standards, and references), related to design for RAMS or individual aspect thereof. Although these techniques are applied with more or less success in some industry sectors, of which the defense industry is a notable example, in general, industry does not apply these known techniques.

This paper reviews much of the literature on RAMS engineering. The literature is collected from major journals and conference proceedings as shown in Table I; the period covered is from 1988 to 2005. We have tried to be reasonably complete, but those papers, which are not included, were either inadvertently overlooked or considered peripheral to this survey. We apologize to readers as well as to researchers if we have omitted any relevant papers. 2. Overview The literature pertaining to RAMS engineering is classied into ve groups namely: (1) Assessment of RAMS parameters. (2) Methodologies for RAMS analysis. (3) Support, design, LCC and other issues. (4) Simulation or modeling for RAMS. (5) Books for RAMS. 2.1 Assessment of RAMS parameters DuJulio and Leet (1988) have presented space station synergetic RAM-Logististics analysis, this study emphasizes to analyze the maintenance activities and processes that can be accomplished on-orbit within the known design and support constraints of the space station. Wood (1989) has developed equations for the availability of a system with exhaustible spares. Terje and Grundt (1989) discussed how catastrophic events should be treated when assessing availability. Bluvband (1990) has presented a technique for tracking the systems availability growth during development and testing so that decision regarding proposed changes can be evaluated. Cockerill (1990) has presented a RAM (Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability) analysis of a turbine-generator system. McFadden (1990) has proposed the techniques for developing the database for reliability, availability and maintainability improvement program for an industrial plant or commercial building. Nurie (1990) has discussed that good testability and higher fault coverage tests provide high quality. Without adequate fault coverage, bad parts pass the acceptance test and are installed in the nal product, resulting in a product with very low reliability. Mi (1991) has presented a methodology for system, which consists of n independent subsystems connected in series. Prince and Haire (1991) presented some Markov models to evaluate the impact of maintenance system availability on the overall plant. Kumar et al. (1992) have presented some results from an analytic study of reliability and availability of the crystallization system in sugar plants.
Serial no. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Source IEEE Transactions on Reliability Reliability Engineering and Safety of Systems Proceedings of the Annual Reliability and Maintainability Symposium Journal of Quality in Maintenance International Journal of Quality and Reliability Journal of Microelectronics and Reliability

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Table I. Sources of most of the references

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Zhao (1994) proposed a generalized availability model for repairable components and series systems. Also said that lifetime of a repaired component has a general distribution, which can be different from that of a new component. Sericola (1994) has proposed a new way to compute the distribution when the model is a two-state semi-Markov process in which the holding times have an exponential distribution for the operational state and a phase-type distribution for the non-operational one. Vaurio (1995) has developed general recursive models for the unavailability and the mission-failure probability of standby equipment subject to periodic testing. Le (1995) presented availability analysis which includes events other then hardware faults. Carlier et al. (1996) have evaluated the reliability, availability, maintainability and safety requirements for manned space vehicle with extended on-orbit stay time. Oliveto (1999) has developed a mathematical model to partition all of the individual availabilities of the system from the operational availability of the system. Reineke et al. (1999) have improved the system availability and expected system cost rate through age replacement preventive maintenance. Rosin et al. (1999) have presented the mberg (1999) described how availability analysis of airport runway. Sandberg and Stro the terms system effectiveness from a logistics perspective and life cycle cost effectiveness were designed into the Gripen combat aircraft and how they are now being taken care of in the operational phase and in the early concept phase. Chan et al. (2000) have discussed power-related failure mechanisms in the analysis of wireless system availability. Hajeeh and Chaudhuri (2000) have worked on reliability and availability assessment of reverse osmosis, this research work assessed the performance of reverse osmosis plants in Arabian Gulf region by analyzing its failure behavior and down time patterns. Zhang and Horigome (2001) studied one kind of systems that endure environmental shocks, and where one or more components can fail simultaneously due to a cumulative shock-damage process. An approach for reliability and availability analysis of such kind of repairable systems is presented, where failure and repair rates of components can be varying with time. Willard (2001) discussed the RAMS cost control on air Trafc. Sun and Han (2002) have proposed a truncated bathtub curve for failure rate, where the infant mortality phase is truncated. The time-to-failure distribution corresponding to the truncated bathtub failure rate is composed of exponential distribution and Weibull distribution. Smith and Smith (2002) have presented a method of calculating system availability and reliability probability distributions using permutations of inseparable system failure and restore data sets. Carpaneto et al. (2002) have given a technique to evaluate the reliability indices of medium voltage distribution systems. Elearth (2003) has described a commonly used process for assessing system availability using probability block diagrams and explained the implicit service strategy built into this process also identies the common circumstances in which approximation creates signicant errors. Rzepka et al. (2003) have discussed the factors which affects the availability of machine tool. Dai et al. (2003) have presented a general model for a centralized heterogeneous distributed system, which is widely used in distributed system design. Fricks and Ketcham (2004) introduced a novel technique for computing condence limits associated with steady-state availability estimation using eld failure data. Barabady (2005) presented reliability and maintainability analysis of crushing plants. In this study crushing plants are divided into seven subsystems. Reliability analysis has been done for each subsystem by using failures data.

2.2 Methodologies for RAMS analysis Jobe (1988) has presented new R&M measures for the systems. The reliability and maintainability measure is referred to as MTUT. It is the mean time to restore equipment to its original working status; it is expressed as a proportion of the mean time to failure for any given equipment. Schroeder and Johnson (1990) have presented a new availability concept for complex systems and called that complex availability. Agraotis (1990) investigated availability an measure of the system which is obtained in terms of the repair and failure time distributions and in the form of convolution integrals which are readily evaluated by means of known computational algorithms. Moran et al. (1990) described a process set up by Digital Technique in Europe to monitor and quantify the availability of its systems. Aven (1990) has presented some simple approximation formulae for the availability of standby redundant systems comprising similar units that are preventively maintained. Guthrie et al. (1990) have developed RAM program guidelines. These guidelines present a structured RAM process for integrating RAM considerations in each dened project phases. Hansen (1990) has discussed the reliability and maintainability aspects of components in computer aided engineering. Jokubaitis and Quinn (1992) have discussed the new army methods for assessing the RAM requirements of a system. Hansen et al. (1992) developed a RAM expert system (RAMES) to assist a weapon system manager to conduct weapon system RAM performance analysis. Collas (1994) has given a simple methodology for assessing the complex system availability and reliability. Madu and Kuci (1994) have developed a group decision support system framework for adjusting system availability levels, this study involves studying the system availability problem as a closed queue where a xed number of machines are required constantly in operation. Fragola and McFadden (1995) have described external maintenance rate prediction and design concept for high reliability and availability on space station freedom. Hassett et al. (1995) has combined time varying failure rates and Markov chain analysis to obtain hybrid reliability and availability analysis. Born and Criscimagna (1995) developed a methodology to evaluate the need of reliability, maintainability and diagnostics for translation processes. Mitchell and Murry (1996) presented a methodology to predict operational availability for systems with redundant, repairable components and multiple sparing level. Newton (1996) presented his comments on time-varying failure rates in the availability and reliability analysis of repairable systems. Tatry et al. (1997) have presented an advance study on RAMS (reliability, availability, maintainability, and safety) for a reusable launch vehicle. Dhudshia (1997) has described SEMI E10 (standard for denition and measurement of equipment reliability, availability and maintainability), which contains key denitions and formulas as well as condence limits to characterize semiconductor manufacturing equipment utilization. Ahrens and Chandra (1999) have presented availability modeling and validation methodology for RS/6000 systems. Yang and Klutke (2001) developed a lower bound for the availability of quantile-based inspection schemes when device lifetimes are assumed to have an increasing failure rate. Markeset and Kumar (2001) have discussed the application of reliability, maintainability and risk analysis methods to minimize life cycle cost of the system. Vintr and Holub (2001) presented R&M requirements for upgrading a system. Brall (2001) presented the implementation of reliability and maintainability program at

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Landies Gardner resulted in R&M becoming institutionalized throughout the company. Singh and Swaminathan (2002) have presented a methodology for determining sample sizes for system availability under the assumption that the time between failures and the times to repair are independently and exponentially distributed. Yin et al. (2002) presented application of semi-Markov process and CTMC to evaluation of UPS system. Finkelstein and Zarudnij (2002) developed a model with the help of Laplace-transforms and fast-repair approximations for multiple availability and its generalizations. Klutke and Yoonjung (2002) presented the availability of inspected systems subject to shocks and graceful degradation. de Castro and Cavalca (2003) have presented an availability optimization problem of an engineering system assembled in a series conguration which has the redundancy of units and teams of maintenance as optimization parameters. Biswas et al. (2003) given a methodology to calculate the availability of periodically inspected system, maintained under an imperfect-repair policy. Marseguerra et al. (2004) calculated optimal reliability/availability of uncertain systems via multi-objective genetic algorithms. Bowles (2004) has developed new productivity tools to improve the reliability and maintainability of software systems. Jackson et al. (2005) developed a guide for achieving and assessing RAM. 2.3 Support, design, LCC and other issues Jackson (1988) has developed a RAMCAD methodology, which consists of interfacing reliability, maintainability and supportability (RMS) computerized analysis with computer-aided design. Lappin (1988) has developed a supportability evaluation prediction process. Daugherty (1989) has described the total program cost benets of allowing life cycle cost sensitivity analysis to derive the conceptual design development, and how the user can more effectively motivate the contractor to optimize his design for supportability and affordability. Mortin (1990) has presented supportability analysis of armys mobile subscriber equipment (MSE) which determines the additional procurement of specic spare parts could greatly increase MSE performance. Graham and Doempke (1990) addressed the concept, implementation, and long-range goals of a supportability trend analysis and reporting system (STAR) for the National Space Transportation System (NSTS). Klement and Dawson (1990) have presented a lesson learnt from the general dynamics of RAM in computer-aided design. Bordelon (1991) has integrated the RMS into conceptual and preliminary weapon system design phase. Stracener and Breneman (1991) have presented RMS initiatives those contributing to the competitive edge. Sherrieb and Stracener (1991) have presented R&M issue in conceptual aircraft design. Dacko et al. (1991) have presented an engineering information system for computer-aided acquisition and logistic support (CALS). Wing et al. (1991) have investigated the effect of redundancy on logistic parameters. Brennan and Strcener (1992) have presented a practical application of cost effectiveness analysis techniques through the denition and solution of representative design tradeoff study using cost effectiveness as a gure of merit for quality. Knezevic (1995) has addressed the problem of maintenance resources selection, spare parts in particular, for non-supported missions. Smith and Knezevic (1996a, b) has discussed that how one can achieve quality through supportability and also presented a mathematical model for spare parts and capital investment equipment

requirement. Sears et al. (1996) have discussed the problems with traditional methodology of supportability and presented a fresh approach to supportability engineering. Kumar and Knezevic (1997) have presented a spare optimization model for series and parallel structures. Van Baaren and Smit (1998) have presented a framework to develop and implement the RAMS and LCC aspect in the design and development process of large-scale, complex technical system. Van Baaren and Smit (1999) have developed a model (SMARD model) for incorporation of RAMS and LCC in the design phase of technical system. Gofn (2000) have discussed the signicance of evaluating the support requirement at the design stage by using design for supportability techniques. Golenko-Ginzburg et al. (2000) have developed a resource supportability simulation model for man-machine production system. Van Baaren and Smit (2000) have discussed that; to successfully develop integrated products, within an interdisciplinary, life cycle oriented system-engineering approach, it is paramount to include all engineering disciplines. Markeset and Kumar (2003) have presented an approach for design and development of product support and maintenance needs for industrial systems in a multinational environment. Markeset and Kumar (2003) have presented an approach for integration of RAMS and risk analysis in the design, development and manufacturing of a product. Martorell et al. (2004) have discussed the roll of technical specication and maintenance (TSM) activities at nuclear power plants (NPP), which aimed to increase RAM of Safety-Related Equipments, which, in turn, must yield to an improved level of plant safety. Markeset and Kumar (2004) have examined issues related to dimensioning of product support for advanced industrial products. The focus is mainly on investigating engineering factors/parameters that inuence product support. 2.4 Simulation or modeling for RAMS Raze et al. (1988) have emphasized the need for improved design technique that can be implemented in the development of potential weapon systems. Dyer (1989) has presented a unication of reliability, availability and repairability models for Markov systems. Wing and Crow (1990) have developed a model for mean time to repair and mean logistic delay time at the system level. Price (1994) has developed a methodology and model for The United States Army Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM) for achieving a system operational availability requirement optimally. Jacobson and Arora (1995) proposed a general approach for calculating the instantaneous availability, which is applicable to system or subsystem, which are assumed to be returned to approximately their original state upon the completion of repair. Hurst (1995) discussed on a steady state operational availability model, which can be used to assist the Canadian Air Force in its aircraft eet management requirements. Rotab and Zohrul (1995) have presented an availability simulation for an ammonia plant; in this work eld data on failure and down time has been collected and analyzed by tting Wiebull distributions. Malhotra (1996) proposed a hybrid approach for numerical transient solution of Markov availability models. Edson and Hansen (1996) developed a software RAM engineering system to aid in management and implementation of a post deployment support process for computer software. Hwang (1996) has developed a general design and performance evaluation model for the system designers in the initial design phase of the integrated manufacturing system based on RAM and LCC. Varvarigou and

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Ahuja (1997) have provided a realistic reliability model for complex services. Johnson and Johnson (1997) have presented a dynamic analytic solution for a 2N state General Availability Model with N components having constant failure and repair rates. Bowles and Dobbins (1998) have presented their practical experience in availability modeling and analysis on high availability transaction processing. Hecht (2001) described the use of standard reliability modeling techniques Markov modeling and reliability block diagrams to analyze a web site and develop the answers to strategic questions on the conguration and operation of high availability computing systems. Murphy et al. (2001) have provided RAM analysts with practical rules of thumb that facilitate the resolution of how long and how many trials are appropriate for simulations that focus on particular RAM parameters. Yang and Nachlas (2001) have presented bivariate reliability and availability modeling. Oliveto (2001) have presented an optimal sparing model for the operational availability to approach the inherent availability. Brall and Gardner (2002) have presented the modeling of availability including the effects of process failures and system capacity. Hou and Okogbaa (2002) proposed a simplied availability modeling worksheet (SAMOW), a computational tool that incorporates Markov analysis and reliability block diagram methodologies to model and analyze the availability of a typical end-to-end solution consisting of multiple complex component systems, where the failure of each component system is attributed to software failures and hardware failures. Lai et al. (2002) have developed Markov model and equations for distributed software/hardware systems to obtain the steady-state availability. Bazargan and McGrath (2003) presented their study on a ight school where overall system availability at the operational level has been a chronic problem. Cassady et al. (2005) have presented a generic model of equipment availability under imperfect maintenance. Rajpal et al. (2006) explored the application of articial neural networks to model the behavior of a complex, repairable system. A composite measure of RAM parameters has been proposed for measuring the systems performance. 2.5 Books for RAMS Besides the above research paper there are various books and handbooks (Ramakumar, 1993; Aggarwal, 1993; Krishnamoorthi, 1992; OConnor, 1988; Ushakov, 1994; Modarres, 1993; Barlow et al., 1993; Villemeur, 1993; Knezevic, 1995; Misra, 1992; Zacks, 1992; Krishnaiah and Rao, 1988; Kececioglu, 1993; Nelson, 1982; Blanchard et al., 1995; Smith, 1993; Holmberg and Folkeson, 1991; Reiche, 1994; Pecht, 1995) are also found on RAMS. These books explain about the basics of RAMS and their analysis, modeling assessment, etc. 3. Conclusion Though a variety of work has been done, specically on reliability maintainability, availability individual or two of them but less work have been found on supportability and very less work has been found on all four aspects of RAMS. Though some people have worked on RAM, they have not considered the supportability aspect. Whatever work exists on RAMS is either on some specic case or on some specic industry like defense or aerospace industry and no body has used the current information technology like internet in connection with it. Therefore use of information technology can make RAMS more effective and can be used for other systems or industry also.

An efcient RAMS engineering is dependent on planned and systematic effort. The RAMS philosophy should include how RAMS should organize and how it should be integrated in the manufacturing industry or service industry. It must also clarify the routine to be followed in RAMS and documentation to be produced. The RAMS philosophy should conclude with objectives that are to be achieved through RAMS.

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Fragola, J.R. and McFadden, R.H. (1995), External maintenance rate prediction and design concepts for high reliability and availability on space station freedom, Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Vol. 47, pp. 255-72. Fricks, R.M. and Ketcham, M. (2004), Steady-state availability estimation using eld failure data, Proceedings of Reliability and Maintainability Symposium, IEEE, New York, NY, pp. 81-5. Gofn, K. (2000), Design for supportability: essential component of new product development, Research Technology Management, Vol. 43 No. 2, March/April, pp. 40-8. Golenko-Ginzburg, D., Sintiiakovski, S. and Papic, P. (2000), Resource supportability simulation model for a man machine production system, Mathematics and Computers in Simulation, Vol. 53, pp. 105-12. Graham, L.J. and Doempke, G.T. (1990), STARS, supportability trend analysis and reporting system for the national space transportation system, Proceedings of Annual Reliability and Maintainability Symposium, IEEE, New York, NY, pp. 42-6. Guthrie, V.H., Farquharson, J.H., Bonnett, R.W. and Bjoro, E.F. (1990), Guidelines for integrating RAM considerations into an engineering project, IEEE Transaction on Reliability, Vol. 39 No. 2, June, pp. 133-9. Hajeeh, M. and Chaudhuri, D. (2000), Reliability and availability assessment of reverse osmosis, Desalition, Vol. 130, pp. 185-92. Hansen, A.G. (1990), Reliability and maintainability in computer-aided engineering, Proceedings of R and M CAE in Concurrent Engineering Workshop, pp. 7-13. Hansen, W.A., Edson, B.N. and Larter, P.C. (1992), Reliability, availability and maintainability expert system, Proceedings of Annual Reliability and Maintainability Symposium, IEEE, New York, NY, pp. 478-82. Hassett, T.F., Dietrich, D.L. and Szidarovszky, F. (1995), Time-varying failure rates in the availability and reliability analysis of repairable systems, IEEE Transaction on Reliability, Vol. 44 No. 1, March, pp. 155-60. Hecht, M. (2001), Reliability/availability modeling and prediction for e-commerce and other internet information systems, Proceedings of Annual Reliability and Maintainability Symposium, IEEE, New York, NY, pp. 176-82. Holmberg, K. and Folkeson, A. (1991), Operational Reliability and Systematic Maintenance, Elsevier Applied Science, Barking. Hou, W. and Okogbaa, O.G. (2002), A simplied availability modeling tool for networks with 1:1 redundant software-hardware systems, Proceedings of Reliability and Maintainability Symposium, IEEE, New York, NY, pp. 556-62. Hurst, D.J. (1995), Operationanl availability modeling for risk and impact analysis, Proceedings of Reliability and Maintainability Symposium, IEEE, New York, NY, pp. 391-6. Hwang, H. (1996), A performance evaluation model for FMS based on RAM and LCC using FACTOR/AIM, Computers Ind. Engng, Vol. 31 Nos 3/4, pp. 593-8. Jackson, T. (1988), What comes rst RAMCAD or a new R&M methodology, Proceedings of Annual Reliability and Maintainability Symposium, IEEE, New York, NY, pp. 32-8. Jackson, Y., Tabbagh, P., Gibson, P. and Seglie, E. (2005), The new Department of Defense (DoD) guide for achieving and assessing RAM, Proceedings of Annual Reliability and Maintainability Symposium, IEEE, New York, NY, pp. 1-17. Jacobson, D.W. and Arora, S.R. (1995), A nonexponential approach to availability modeling, Proceedings of Reliability and Maintainability Symposium, IEEE, New York, NY, pp. 253-60.

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