Reliability, Availability, Maintainability & Safety (RAMS) services have been one of the core ALD activities and fields of expertise since the company's establishment in 1984. ALD's RAMS team has performed hundreds of reliability projects covering the entire scope of reliability, maintainability and safety tasks. More than 30 years of reliability consulting, training, software development and research are the solid basis of the ALD specialists' reputation as the world leading RAMS team in the world.

Building a comprehensive R & M Program Plan covering all phases of a product life cycle is the only way to ensure achievement of the specified product/system reliability. R & M program is far more than a simple calculation of an MTBF - it is an outline defining each task/element functional requirements and constraints for each stage of the product life cycle: concept, design, manufacturing, operation and maintenance. ALD's reliability experts will create a comprehensive R & M Program Plan for your product/system using their unique expertise in reliability, electronics, physics and mathematics.

Reliability Prediction Methods

•  MIL-HDBK-217
•  217 Plus
•  SR332 - Telcordia 2001
•  RDF 95 - French Telecom
•  IEC 62380 (RDF 2003)
•  UTEC 80810 - (CNET 2000)
•  FIDES Guide 2004
•  SN29500.1 - Siemens
•  HRD - British Telecom
•  ALCATEL
•  RADC 85-91
•  GJB299 - Chinese Standard
•  NSWC 98
•  GJB299 - Chinese Reliability
•  GJB 1391,1392 - Chinese FMECA
•  CJB/Z35 - Chinese Derating
•  Stress/Strength
 
Reliability Allocation, Prediction & Analysis

ALD's RAMS team performs reliability prediction for electronic and non-electronic parts according to any of the existing reliability standards and manufacturer's in-house data. Reliability calculations include the electrical/thermal stress analysis to account for all possible variations of those stresses. The output is a report with a breakdown of MTBF and MTBCF figures per system, unit, board and component levels. The reliability figures for "Buy" items are incorporated into prediction after adjustment to a particular environment and temperature condition.
See ALD RAMS Software - Reliability prediction module.

Reliability Models

Development of an adequate reliability model for the entire system is a key task in reliability and availability analysis. Reliability model simulates your actual system taking into account fault tolerance, redundancy and other important reliability factors. ALD's reliability experts have comprehensive expertise in Monte Carlo simulation, Markov Chains and other methods of reliability modeling applied to the evaluation of system reliability, availability and readiness. The outputs are the Reliability and Availability values for your systems as well as the MTBCF estimates based on redundancy assumptions and failure mode analysis information.
See ALD RAMS Software - Reliability Block Diagram and Markov Chains modules.

Failure Mode Analysis

The Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) is an engineering technique for identification and elimination of known and/or potential problems of a system. The FMEA is an ongoing process that should start as a part of the first design review and continue throughout your product life cycle. ALD's experts will perform the FMECA, focusing on the critical failures as well the potential failure modes analysis for your design and/or process. Then ALD's RAMS team will follow your product life cycle ensuring effective FMECA according to the MIL-STD-1629A requirements and process/design FMEA fully compliant with QS 9000 guidelines.
See also ALD RAMS Software - FMECA module.

Fault tree analysis and event tree analysis are two most mature and versatile methods for dealing with probabilistic risk, reliability and availability issues. Our RAMS experts have gained extensive expertise performing fault tree analysis for the wide range of military and commercial products.
See ALD RAMS Software - Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) software module and Event Tree Analysis (ETA) sotware module.

Efficient and cost-effective R&M test strategy is essential for the achievement of R&M design and performance goals. ALD's RAMS experts will help you establish R&M test planning strategy suggesting types of testing, test schedule, amount of risk to be tolerated, and the best outcome for your available resources.

System Safety Assessment, FHA, PHA, PSSA

Aircraft Safety Assessment process covers verification of the requirements of the aircraft development activities. Safety Assessment methodology is designed to assure that all significant failure conditions have been identified and considered. Safety Assessment is a significant part of the aircraft certification process by national, European (EASA) and US (FAA) regulatory authorities.
ALD's experts have performed Safety Assessment for numerous aviation customers worldwide.
We start with Functional Hazard Analysis (FHA) at the beginning of the aircraft development, then perform Preliminary Hazard Analysis (PHA), Preliminary System Safety Assessment (PSSA) and finally System Safety Assessment (SSA) and Safety Assessment Report (SAR).
ALD's Aircraft Safety experts perform all connected activities: evaluation and creation of FTAs and FMEAs for the aircraft manufacturer and all suppliers, Common Cause Analysis, preparation of all required reports for the appropriate aircraft certification authorities.
ALD RAMS software toolkit RAM Commander with its Safety software module supports all the needs of the Aircraft Safety Assessment including a database that can be used for the next generations of aircrafts.
 
Testability Analysis

Testability analysis is one of the widely used methods for qualitative and quantitative evaluation of BIT/BITE design characteristics, such as Fault Detection probability, BIT coverage, Fault Isolation resolution and False Alarm probability. ALD's RAMS team performs testability analysis in conjunction with FMECA.

See also:

ALD Reliability Prediction and Safety Analysis Software Tools Overview
Download ALD Reliability Prediction and Safety Analysis Software - RAM Commander