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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Sharad Kumar Senior Director, Systems Engineering General Dynamics Land Systems
Larry H. Crow |
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