Reliability Lab Testing, Consulting, Training.

Ops a la Carte

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Engineering Success with Reliable Products.

Maintainability and Preventive Maintenance Analysis

Maintainability/Preventive Maintenance Analysis

DEFINITION

Maintainability Analysis is the method of determining how to best design a product for ease of maintenance. A Maintainability Prediction is the method of determining how long a product will take to be repaired once it fails. A Preventive Maintenance Analysis is the method of determining how often a product will need to be maintained periodically in order to keep it in good working order.

SITUATION

Whenever a product can be repaired after it fails, and whenever preventive maintenance is required on a product, we need to put some thought into how to design the product for maintenance.

OBJECTIVES

To use these analytical tools to help design a product for ease of maintenance.

VALUE TO YOUR ORGANIZATION

Opportunities for failure can occur during maintenance as well as during operation. By making the product easier to maintain, we are effectively improving its reliability.

RELIABILITY INTEGRATION

An example of Reliability Integration during Preventive Maintenance is as follows:

Performing HASS on spares in conjunction with Preventive Maintenance

Performing Preventive Maintenance/parts replacement on subsystems that have no wear-out mode, or too soon before the subsystem goes into wear-out mode can actually reduce the reliability because we will be taking out a part in its steady state failure period (bottom of bathtub curve) and replacing it with one at the infant mortality period (left-most part of bathtub curve). One way around this is to perform HASS on the subsystem prior to shipping as a spare.

METHODOLOGY

Maintainability Analysis

The Maintainability Analysis primarily focuses on how easy a product is to repair once it fails. This is closely related to the Human Factors Analysis because a large part of the repair process involves the user. During this analysis, we will analyze your product for ease of maintenance and calculate the Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) for your product, a measure of the average repair time. This is calculated by averaging the repair times for each individual replaceable assembly, weighted by failure rate.

The main components that go into this calculation are

  1. time to detect and isolate a failed assembly;
  2. time for user to replace the assembly; and
  3. time to validate the repair was successful.
Preventive Maintenance

be replaced on a continual basis. This analysis will calculate how often these products should be replaced and tie it back into the maintainability analysis to determine the overall cost of maintaining the product in the field.

These services can be closely tied to the Failure Modes, Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) service or they can be performed independent of the FMECA.

CASE STUDIES/OPTIONS

The following case studies and options provide example approaches. We shall tailor our approach to meet your specific situation.

  1. Calculating Maintenance Times to Determine Spares Requirements

    For a Semiconductor Manufacturing Equipment company, we calculated their maintenance times, both unscheduled as well as scheduled, to determine how many spares to keep on site.

  2. Calculating Availability and Mean Time to Repair (MTTR)

    A Networking company had a high availability target to hit and, therefore, the Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) was critical and had to be calculated accurately. For this, we calculated each of the elements that go into the MTTR – Isolation time, diagnostic time, repair and replace time, and checkout time.

  3. Using What-If Analyses to Improve Availability and Mean Time to Repair (MTTR)

    A Military subcontractor had a high availability target and found that they were not meeting their target. We determined the highest MTTR elements and then developed some “what-if” scenarios to improve the time.

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OPS A La Carte, Engineering Success with Reliable Products. We are a leading reliability engineering consulting firm since 2001. We have helped many companies create robust products and elevate them to great success, even become the leader in their industry. We are known for providing the whole gamut of reliability lab testing, consulting, and training. With over 25 reliability engineer-experts around the world, with diverse backgrounds and experience, we serve both domestic and global businesses in all areas of reliability, in depth and width. Hi, my name is Jay Muns, owner and CEO. I have more than 30 years of experience in engineering and business operations.

OPS A La Carte have produced very high-quality results for us, with fast turnaround times. Their engineers are the best in their field, are a pleasure to work with, and their work is of the highest standards available. This has helped us obtain critical product approvals…” We help companies see from outside of their forest and understand what they didn’t know before. Companies come to us out of three scenarios: First, when their products fail. We help put out the fire by identifying problems and providing solutions. Second, after a product is designed, to check the box and move on with getting their product into the marketplace. The best is third: to get engaged early, by including reliability as a part of their initial product design goals. This will save time, money and energy. It is much better to have a worry-free product that addresses reliability issues upfront, than dealing with deficiencies after a product is developed, or worse, already manufactured and sold to the end users. Being proactive with reliability engineering will save a business tons of money and trouble. In all scenarios, you receive professional expertise with integrity and at a fair price. Many of our clients are repeat customers for years because of the value we consistently deliver.

Our ENGINEER-consultants each have over 20 years of experience and perform lab testing, consulting and training based on actual reliability science. They follow well established industry standards, such as “HALT” (highly accelerated life test,) and “HASS” (highly accelerated stress screen.) These engineers evaluate, make recommendations and validate results based on highly relevant lab data, co-relating to real world data. Whether your company has a reliability department or not, you can take advantage of our entire testing-consulting-training package, or any portion of it. We also offer Failure analysis and safety certification services such as UL, CE, and other environmental testing services, like solar, UV, SALT spray testing, ESD (electro-static discharge,) and EMC (electro-magnetic compatibility.)

“Ops A La Carte trained us to use HALT methodology as a proactive tool, to root out key failures in our early and advanced prototypes, and that made it possible for us to deliver dependability that our customers demand, in pilot and production units."“...OPS has played a key role in our evolution from a research company to a manufacturer of ‘mission-critical’ components.” A couple of companies describe our HALT/HASS training as “highly informative, engaging and exciting.” “The benefit far exceeds the price."

Our mission is to enable companies to create their happy customers, with a well-engineered product. By helping our clients understand the real problems and the real solutions, we help improve their careers and reputations. Achieving the win-win-win results for our clients and their customers is our ultimate satisfaction. We have a family-like company culture with positive energy and great teamwork. An improved and reliable product is our own small way to contribute to a better humanity and a slightly better world. Call us at (408) 654-0499, or email us at info@opsalacarte.com, or visit our website www.opsalacarte.com. Thank you!

A couple of our clients' testimonials:

"The expert team at OPS assisted us in evaluating the available reliability testing possibilities, and with their help, we crafted a customized test program precisely sized to meet the needs of our project. The resulting program proved to our team, our customers, and our regulatory auditors that our product was robust, met its reliability goals effectively, and satisfied all safety risk factors."

"...Ops A La Carte worked with us to develop a testing program based on HALT and HASS to effectively assess low-temperature operation capability and screen the boards for assembly and component defects. They then facilitated and supported the HALT and HASS testing effort. It was quicker and more efficient than we had expected. The boards for the first four strings have been delivered. We are looking forward to working with them through completion of the project."