Track 1 Session 8
2:20 to 3:20 p.m. Wednesday June 10, 2009

Design For Reliability Methodology to Achieve Reliability Growth that Meets New Guidelines

Recent changes in Reliability, Availability and Maintainability (RAM) policy address the problem of inadequate system reliability and led to establishing a reliability improvement acquisition policy for all programs. The main emphases are made on the formulation and consecutive execution of a viable RAM strategy that includes a reliability growth program as an integral part of design and development. In this presentation, the authors discuss the successful employment of the Design for Reliability (DFR) approach in order to address the above mentioned concerns. The DFR methodology has reliability growth as a major driver for the design and system engineering activities. DFR helps to attain reliability in the initial stages of the design process and is a disciplined systemic approach that helps the design process to focus on reliability as its important characteristic.

Key Words: DFR, Reliability, Test, Evaluation, FDSC, SA, DART, FPRB, Reliability Growth

Dmitry Tananko, Carl Elliot and Michael Pakulak
General Dynamics Land Systems
Sterling Heights, Michigan