RELIABILITY, MAINTAINABILITY

& AVAILABILITY INTRODUCTION

International Society of Logistics (SOLE)

slides provided by Frank Vellella, C.P.L;
Ken East, C.P.L & Bernard Price, C.P.L

1
 System Reliability
• The probability of performing a mission action without a mission
failure within a specified mission time t
• A system with a 90% reliability has a 90% probability that the
system will operate the mission duration without a critical failure
• The failure rate, Lambda, provides the frequency of failure
occurrences over time
• The random variable in Reliability is time-to-failure
1
 MTTF (Mean Time To Failure)
λ
• The Reliability equation for a system has the failure rate times the
mission time distributed exponentially, Reliability R(t) is given by:

R t   e  t
(λ = failure rate)
2
 Additional Time to Failure Terminology
• Mean Time Between Operational Mission Failure
(MTBOMF) – System mission reliability often associated
to an operating mission requirement, where the failure
causes a mission abort or mission degradation

• Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) – System reliability

typically associated to a design specification based on
operating use. Per failure definition, the failure may be
to any item causing a logistics demand or just critical
items within the system

• Mean Calendar Time Between Failure (MCTBF) – System

reliability typically associated to a system operational
availability based on calendar time per failure
• Failure Factor (FF) – Component logistics reliability
typically used for logistics support expressed in terms
of failures or demands per 100 systems per year 3
 System Requirement Example

• What is the MTBOMF of a system required to have a 91%

reliability over a 72 hour mission pulse?

t
R t   e  λt
e MTBOMF

72  MTBOMF
72

.91  e MTBOMF ln .91  ln e 

 
 72
 0.0943107  0.0943107 MTBOMF  72
MTBOMF

72
MTBOMF   763.434 operating hours per mission failure
0.0943107
4
 System Reliability Terminology

• System - Collection of components, subsystems

and/or assemblies arranged to a specific design in
order to achieve desired functions with acceptable
performance and reliability

– The types of components, their quantities, their qualities and

the manner in which they are arranged within the system have
a direct effect on the system's reliability
 
– The reliability relationship between a system and its
components is sometimes misunderstood or oversimplified
• An example non-valid statement is: If all components in a
system have a 90% reliability at a given time, the reliability
of the system is 90% for that time.
5
 System Reliability Terminology
• Block Diagrams are widely used in engineering and
science and exist in many different forms.

• Reliability Block Diagram (RBD)

– Describes the interrelation between the components
to define the system
– Graphical representation of the system components
and how they are reliability-wise related (connected)
– RBD may differ from how the components are
physically connected
– After defining properties of each block in a system,
the blocks can be connected in a reliability-wise
manner to create a RBD for the system
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 Example Reliability Block Diagram

RBD of a simplified computer system with a

redundant fan configuration

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 System Reliability Block Diagram
• The System Reliability Function
– The RBD represents the system’s functioning state (i.e.
success or failure) in terms of the functioning states of its
components
– The RBD demonstrates the effect of the success or failure of a
component on the success or failure of the system
• If all components in a system must succeed for the system
to succeed, the components are arranged reliability-wise in
series
• If one of two components must succeed in order for the
system to succeed, those two components are arranged
reliability-wise in parallel  
– The reliability-wise arrangement of components is directly
related to the derived mathematical description of the system
– The system's reliability function uses probabilistic methods for
defining the system reliability from the component reliabilities
– System reliability is often described as a function of time 8
 Series Configuration

• A failure of any component results in failure for the entire

system
• When considering a system at the subsystem level,
subsystems are often arranged reliability-wise in a series
configuration
- Example: a PC may consist of four basic subsystems: the
motherboard, hard drive, power supply and the processor
- A failure to any of these subsystems will cause a system failure
- All units in a series system must succeed for system to succeed
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Series Configuration System Reliability
• The reliability of the system is the probability that unit
1 succeeds and unit 2 succeeds and all of the other
units in the system succeed
• All n units must succeed for the system to succeed

The reliability of the system is then given by:

In the case of independent components, this becomes:

Or:

10
 Series System Reliability Example

• Three subsystems are reliability-wise in series & make up a system

– Subsystem 1 has a reliability of 99.5% for a 100 hour mission
– Subsystem 2 has a reliability of 98.7% for a 100 hour mission
– Subsystem 3 has a reliability of 97.3% for a 100 hour mission
• What is the overall reliability of the system for a 100 hour mission?
 
• Solution to the RBD and Analytical System Reliability Example
– Since reliabilities of the subsystems are specified for 100 hours,
the reliability of the system for a 100 hour mission is simply:

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 Basic System Reliability
• Effect of Component Reliability in a Series System 
– In a series configuration, the component with the smallest
reliability has the biggest effect on the system's reliability
– Saying: A chain is only as strong as its weakest link
– Good example of the effect of a component in a series system
• In a chain, all the rings are in series and if any of the rings
break, the system fails
• The weakest link in the chain is the one that will break first
• The weakest link dictates the strength of the chain in the
same way that the weakest component/subsystem dictates
the reliability of a series system
– As a result, the reliability of a series system is always less than
the reliability of the least reliable component.

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 Redundant Configuration

• Simple Parallel Systems

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 Redundant System Configuration

• In a simple parallel system, at least one of the

units must succeed for the system to succeed
• Units in parallel are also referred to as
redundant units
• Redundancy is a very important aspect of
system design & reliability because adding
redundancy is one of several methods to
improve system reliability
• Redundancy is widely used in the aerospace
industry and generally used in mission critical
systems 
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Parallel Configuration System Reliability
• The probability of failure, or unreliability, for a system
with n statistically independent parallel components is
the probability that unit 1 fails and unit 2 fails and all of
the other units in the system fail
• In a parallel system, all n units must fail for the system
to fail
• If unit 1 succeeds or unit 2 succeeds or any of the n
units succeeds, then the system succeeds
The unreliability of the system is then given by:

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 Redundant System Unreliability

In the case of independent components:

Or

Or, in terms of component unreliability:

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 Redundant System Reliability

• With the series system, the system reliability is the

product of the component reliabilities
• With the parallel system, the overall system unreliability
is the product of the component unreliabilities
 
The reliability of the parallel system is then given by:

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 Redundant System Reqt. Example
• What is the MTBOMF of each system when it is required to have
91% probability that 1 of 2 systems operate failure free over a 72
hour mission pulse?

R  1Q Q1  Q2  Q 2  0.09 Q 2  0.09

Q  0.3 R  1  Q  1  0.3  0.7 per system

72  MTBOMF
72

0.7  e MTBOMF ln .7   ln e 

 
 72
 0.356675  0.356675  MTBOMF  72
MTBOMF
72
MTBOMF   201.864 operating hours per mission failure
0.356675
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 Redundant System Reliability Example

• Three subsystems are reliability-wise in parallel & make up a system

– Subsystem 1 has a reliability of 99.5% for a 100 hour mission
– Subsystem 2 has a reliability of 98.7% for a 100 hour mission
– Subsystem 3 has a reliability of 97.3% for a 100 hour mission
• What is the overall reliability of the system for a 100 hour mission?
 
• Solution to the RBD and Analytical System Reliability Example
– Since reliabilities of the subsystems are specified for 100 hours,
the reliability of the system for a 100 hour mission is simply:

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 Series Reliability Block Diagram

A B C N T
RA RB RC RN RT

All elements, (A,B,C,…,N) must work for equipment T to

work. The reliability of T is:

RT = R A • R B • R C • … • R N = R
i A
i

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Block Diagrams with Parallel Reliability
and Series Reliability
A
RA C T

B RC RT

RB

At least one of the elements (A,B) and element C must

work for equipment T to work. The reliability of T is:

RT  1  1  R A 1  RB   x RC
 1  1  R A  RB  R ARB   x RC
 1 1  R A  RB  R ARB  x RC
  R A  RB  R ARB  x RC
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 Non-Repairable Systems

• Non-repairable systems do not get repaired when

they fail

– Specifically, components of the system are not

removed or replaced when the system fails because it
does not make economic sense to repair the system

– Repairing a four-year-old microwave oven is

economically unreasonable when the repair costs
approximately as much as purchasing a new unit
 

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 Repairable Systems
• Repairable systems get repaired when they fail
– Repairs are done by replacing the failed components in system
– Example: An automobile is a repairable system when rendered
inoperative by a component or subsystem failure by typically
removing & replacing the failed components rather than
purchasing a new automobile
– Failure distributions and repair distributions apply to repairable
systems
• A failure distribution describes the time it takes for a
component to fail
• A repair distribution describes the time it takes to repair a
component (time-to-repair instead of time-to-failure)
– For repairable systems, the failure distribution itself is not a
sufficient measure of system performance because it does not
account for the repair distribution
– A performance criterion called availability is calculated to
account for both the failure and repair distributions
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 System Maintainability/Maintenance
• Deals with repairable system maintenance
• System Maintainability involves the time it takes to
restore a system to a specified condition when
maintenance is performed by personnel having specified
skills using prescribed procedures and resources
• In general, maintenance is defined as any action that
restores failed units to an operational condition or retains
non-failed units in an operational state
• Maintenance plays a vital role in the life of a system
affecting the system's overall reliability, availability,
downtime, cost of operation, etc.
• Types of system maintenance actions: corrective
maintenance, preventive maintenance & inspections
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 Corrective Maintenance
• Actions taken to restore a failed system to
operational status
• Usually involves replacing or repairing the
component that is responsible for the failure of
the overall system
• Corrective maintenance is performed at
unpredictable intervals because a component's
failure time is not known a priori
• The objective of corrective maintenance is to
restore the system to satisfactory operation
within the shortest possible time 25
 Corrective Maintenance Steps

• Diagnosis of the problem

– Maintenance technician takes time to locate the
failed parts or otherwise satisfactorily assess the
cause of the system failure
• Repair and/or replacement of faulty component
– Action is taken to address the cause, usually by
replacing or repairing the components that caused
the system to fail
• Verification of the repair action
– Once components have been repaired or replaced,
the maintenance technician must verify that the
system is again successfully operating
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 Preventive Maintenance
• The practice of replacing components or subsystems
before they fail to promote continuous system
operation
• The preventive maintenance schedule is based on:
– Observation of past system behavior
– Component wear-out mechanisms
– Knowledge of components vital to continued system operation
• Cost is always a factor in the scheduling of preventive
maintenance
– Reliability may be a factor, but cost is a more general term
because reliability & risk can be expressed in terms of cost
– In many circumstances, it may be financially better to replace
parts or components that have not failed at predetermined
intervals rather than wait for a system failure that may result in
a costly disruption in operations
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 Inspections

• Used to uncover hidden failures (also called dormant

failures)
• In general, no maintenance action is performed on the
component during an inspection unless the
component is found failed causing a corrective
maintenance action to be initiated
• Sometimes there may be a partial restoration of the
inspected item performed during an inspection
– For example, when checking the motor oil in a car between
scheduled oil changes, one might occasionally add some oil in
order to keep it at a constant level

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 Maintenance Downtime

• There is time associated with each maintenance

action, i.e. amount of time it takes to complete
the action
• This time is referred to as downtime & defined as
the length of time an item is not operational
• There are a number of different factors that can
affect the length of downtime
– Physical characteristics of the system
– Repair crew availability
– Spare part availability & other ILS factors
– Human factors & Environmental factors
• There are two Downtime categories for these
factors: Waiting Downtime & Active Downtime
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 Maintenance Downtime

• Waiting Downtime
– The time during which the equipment is inoperable, but not yet
undergoing repair
– For example, the time it takes for replacement parts to be
shipped, administrative processing time, etc.

• Active Downtime
– The time during which the equipment is inoperable and
actually undergoing repair
– The active downtime is the time it takes repair personnel to
perform a repair or replacement
– The length of the active downtime is greatly dependent on
human factors and the design of the equipment
– For example, the ease of accessibility of components in a
system has a direct effect on the active downtime
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 System Maintainability

• The time it takes to repair/restore a specific item is a random

variable implying an underlying probabilistic distribution

• Distributions describing the time-to-repair are repair or downtime

distributions, distinguishing them from failure distributions

• Methods to quantify these distributions are similar, but differ in how

employed, i.e. the events they describe and metrics utilized
– In failure distributions, unreliability provides the probability the
event (failure) will occur by that time, while reliability provides
the probability the event (failure) will not occur
– In downtime distributions, the times-to-repair data becomes the
probability of the event (repairing the component) occurring

• The probability of repairing the component by a given time, t, is

also called the component's maintainability
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 System Maintainability
• Maintainability is sometimes defined as a probability of
performing a successful repair action within a given time
• Measures the ease & speed with which a system can be
restored to operational status after a failure occurs
• For example, a component with a 90% maintainability in
one hour has a 90% probability the component will be
repaired in one hour
• Maintainability M(t) for a system with the repair times
distributed exponentially is given by:

M  t   1  e μt where
1
μ = repair rate  Mean Time To Repair (MTTR)
μ 32
 Maintainability/Time to Repair Terms
• Mean Corrective Maintenance Time for Operational
Mission Failure Repairs (MCMTOMF) is based on the
average time to repair operational mission failures

• Mean Corrective Maintenance Time (MCMT) is based on

the average corrective time to all failures

• Maximum (e.g. 90 percentile time) Corrective Maintenance

Time (MaxCMT) for all incidents may be applied to
maintainability testing
• Maintenance Ratio (MR) is a full maintenance burden
requirement expressed in terms of the Mean Maintenance
Man-Hours per Operating Hour, Mile, etc. The cumulative
number of maintenance man-hours during a given period
divided by the cumulative number of operating hours
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 Availability
• Considers both reliability (probability the item will not
fail) and maintainability (probability the item is
successfully restored after failure)
• Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability (RAM) are
always associated with time
• Availability is the probability that the system/component
is operational at a given time, t (i.e. has not failed or it
has been restored after failure)
• May be defined as the probability an item is operable &
can be committed at the start of a mission when the
mission is called for at any unknown (random) point in
time. Example: For a lamp with a 99.9% availability,
there will be one time out of a thousand that someone
needs to use the lamp and finds it is not operating
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 RAM Relationships

• Availability alone tells us nothing about how many

times the lamp has been replaced
• Reliability and Maintainability metrics are still
important. The table illustrates RAM relationships 

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 Inherent Availability

• The steady state availability when considering

only the corrective downtime of the system
– For a single component, this can be computed by:

- For a system, the Mean Time Between Failures, or

MTBF, is used to compute inherent availability:
 

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 Achieved Availability

• Achieved Availability is similar to Inherent Availability

except Preventive Maintenance (PM) is also included
• The steady state availability when considering the
corrective and preventive downtime of the system
• Computed by looking at the Mean Time Between
Maintenance actions, MTBM and the Mean Maintenance
Downtime:

37
 Operational Availability
• Operational Availability is the percentage of calendar
time to which one can expect a system to work
properly when it is required
• Expression of User Need rather than just Design Need
• Operational Availability is the ratio of the system
Uptime and Total time. Mathematically, it is: 
Uptime
Ao 
Uptime  Downtime
• Includes all experienced sources of downtime, such as
administrative downtime and logistic downtime to
restore the system
38
 Basic System Availability
• Previous availability definitions can be a priori
estimations based on models of the system failure and
downtime distributions
• Inherent Availability and Achieved Availability are
controlled by the system designer/manufacturer
• Operational Availability is not solely controlled by the
manufacturer due to variations in location, resources
and logistics factors under the province of the end user
of the product
• When recorded, an Operational Readiness Rate is the
Operational Availability that the customer actually
experiences. It is the a posteriori availability based on
actual events that happened to the system 39
 Ao / Operational Readiness Example

• A diesel power generator is supplying electricity at a

research site in Antarctica & personnel are not satisfied
with the generator

• In the past six months, they estimate being without

electricity due to generator failure for an accumulated time
of 1.5 months
• Therefore, the operational availability of the diesel
generator experienced by personnel of the station is:

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 Redundant Configurations

• Hot Standby Redundancy

– Operates all systems or subassemblies simultaneously
– Accrues more failures by operating all items
– Switchover time to the redundant item is near instantaneous
– Uses the Binomial Distribution to determine the Operational
Availability (Ao) of the redundant configuration

• Cold Standby Redundancy

– Redundant systems or subassemblies are treated like spares
stored in the system configuration
– Accrues less failures by operating only the items needed
– Switchover time to the redundant item is needed
– Uses the Poisson Distribution to determine the Ao of the
redundant configuration

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 Binomial Distribution

R out of N of the Same System Need To Be Up:

N N  1 N  2 N!
A oconfig  A oN  N  A oN 1   1  A o   A o   1  A o   ...   A oN  R   1  A o 
2 R

2  N  R ! R!

Series configuration where R=N as all common items need to be up:

A o config  A oN because only the first Binomial term is used

Redundant Config where R=1 as only 1 of the items needs to be up:

Note: All terms of a Binomial Distribution sum up to 1

A o config  1   1  A o 
N
because all but the last Binomial term is used

42