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Keynote Address
8:00 to 9:00 a.m. Thursday
June 21, 2007
For this year's Keynote Address,
Sharad Kumar, Senior Director, Systems Engineering for General
Dynamics Land Systems and Dr. Larry H. Crow of Crow Reliability
Resources, Inc. will present a reliability engineering success
story:
Reliability Growth Management Requires
Systems Engineering Approach
The Army’s Stryker Family of
Vehicles consists of ten individual vehicle platforms or variants
built on a common chassis and are designed by General Dynamics to
maximize force effectiveness. Eight variants were near
Nondevelopment Items (NDI) and are in production and have been
deployed in Iraq with remarkable effectiveness. The remaining two
variants, Mobile Gun System (MGS) and Nuclear, Biological, Chemical
Reconnaissance Vehicle (NBCRV) had to go through further
development. The MGS Product Qualification Test revealed significant
reliability issues particularly with its ammunition handling system.
General Dynamics, with the help of
Crow Reliability Resources and ReliaSoft software, embarked on a
Systems Engineering approach to grow MGS’s reliability by almost an
order of magnitude. This integrated reliability management approach
consisted of multiple analyses of test data to extract relevant
information, identification of design corrective actions, selected
redesigns, validation of corrective actions prior to implementation,
focused effort to drive out quality and maintenance related issues,
maturation of Failure Definition Scoring Criteria and DFMEA of total
design to discover and correct unseen failure modes. The reliability
program was managed by a Failure Prevention Review Board with senior
membership. The results have been outstanding and MGS is on track to
meet its operational requirements.
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