Market Survey - Commercial Reliability, Availability and Maintainability Engineering Software

摘要

In aerospace projects increased reliability, availability and maintainability (RAM) is an important contribution to the reduction of the technical and financial risks. So called RAM Engineering software makes it easier to perform such analyses, particularly in early development phases.rnThe objective of this work is the investigation of commercially available tools (e.g. AvSim+, OpSSim, RAPTOR, Relex, ...) for the application at the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company. The tool should be adapted to the specific requirement of future users.rnThe requirements for a RAM Engineering Tool are expressed in KO-Criteria, Criteria and their corresponding weighting factors Altogether 13 RAM Engineering software, which are available on the market, were analyzed. Information about the products was collected, in order to conduct a qualitative comparison of their abilities. After a preselection nine products were tested on the basis of an example system and afterwards evaluated regarding the determined criteria and their weighting factors.rnThe investigation suggests that the market does not offer an optimal tool for all applications at EADS, but each tool has its strengths and weaknesses. The result of the evaluation determines the software, which offers the best compromise for the calculation of the reliability and the inherent and achieved availability. However different tools are recommended for special applications like the calculation of the mission reliability or the operational availability.