SBIR-STTR Award

Military program offices are challenged to make effective reliability decisions throughout development and acquisition programs. The decisions range from determining what reliability requirements to specify to assure that the system users' mission needs are met to selecting the most effective means of assessing whether the system reliability is adequate to pass through various program decision "gates." These challenges are often faced by personnel with varying reliability-specific experience and training who have multiple program responsibilities and, therefore, need the benefit of the accumulated knowledge and expertise that a tool like RAPTRE offers. The proposed RAPTRE tool will bring together the types of decision rules, analysis tools, checklists, as well as other forms of reliability knowledge, information and data to facilitate the decision making process. The tool's project tracking capability will provide a mechanism for measuring the effectiveness of reliability approaches in the form of lessons learned and metrics tracking allowing it to "learn" from continued use. Although the RAPTRE tool will be developed for the military, it has tremendous long term commercial potential as well. The development of RAPTRE will greatly facilitate the reliability decision making process for military programs but it will also be very useful outside the military. Other government organizations like NASA, the FAA and NOAA face many of the same reliability decisions as the military; the same is true for non-government organizations like the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Electric Power Research Institute, the Gas Research Institute as well as the utility industry in general. In this era of Defense Acquisition Reform with "performance based requirements" RAPTRE can be very effective in helping prime contractors structure their reliability approaches that will successfully meet the government's needs. Also, because reliability and quality have become discriminating product attributes in the marketplace, commercial manufacturers can benefit from use of the tool as well. Benefits of using RAPTRE for organizations buying and using systems and products are more effective reliability decisions, and therefore lower risk and lower cost in meeting the users' needs as well as in fielding more supportable systems. To the developers and manufacturers of products and systems the benefits are more success in the marketplace, whether competing for government systems or selling commercial products, lower warranty costs and reduced manufacturing costs.

Military program offices are challenged to make effective reliability decisions throughout equipment and systems development, acquisition, production and operation/maintenance phases. The decisions range from determining what reliability requirements to specify to assure that the user's mission needs are met to selecting the most cost effective means to assessing whether the system reliability is adequate to pass through various program decision "gates." These challenges are often faced by personnel with varying reliability-specific experience and training who have multiple program responsibilities. These individuals need the benefit of the accumulated knowledge and experience that the RAPTRE environment can provide. The proposed RAPTRE RelConsultant will provide tailorable decision recommendations, analysis tools, rules-of-thumb, checklists and lessons learned coupled with the RelTrack program specific constraints/schedule, requirements, and results tracking. The environment will also include RelKnowledge content to facilitate decision making. RAPTRE will learn from informed decisions as it is used as a means to improve the decision-making process. While developed for military use, RAPTRE has tremendous value as a resource to non-military government organizations and to the industrial community as well.The development of RAPTRE will greatly facilitate the reliability decision making process for military programs, but it will also be very useful outside the military. Other government organizations like NASA, the FAA and NOAA face many of the same reliability decision issues as the military; the same is true for non-government organizations like the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), as well as the utility industry in general. In this era of the military using "performance-based" requirements, RAPTRE can be a very effective tool in helping prime contractors structure reliability approaches that will successfully meet the government's needs. Also, because reliability and quality have become discriminating product characteristics in the marketplace, commercial manufacturers can benefit from RAPTRE as well. Benefits of using RAPTRE for organizations buying and using products and systems are more effective reliability decisions, and therefore lower risk and lower cost in meeting users' needs as well as in fielding more supportable systems. To the developers and manufacturers of products and systems the benefits are greater success in the marketplace, whether competing for government systems contracts or selling commercial products, lower warranty costs and a higher level of customer satisfaction.

Keywords:
reliability analysis, expert system, decision making, project tracking, availability, reliability program, tailoring reliability, maintainabili