If you want to ensure the reliability of your critical assets and lower your lifecycle sustainment costs, it helps to have a reliability program plan. A Reliability Program Plan (RPP) takes into account all the best practice methods applicable to ensuring acceptable reliability in systems and products. The reliability program plan is a comprehensive compendium of the system’s reliability models, test strategies, data collections, measurements, assessments, resources, and timelines required to ensure that the specified reliability of the system will be achieved prior to fielding, and maintained during its lifecycle. A RPP is usually prepared early in the program and is periodically reviewed and updated to reflect changes in cost, schedule, and scope.
Typically, the reliability program plan contains the following four objectives:
- Understand Customer Requirements and Constraints
- Design and Redesign for Reliability
- Produce Reliable Systems/Products
- Monitor and Assess User Reliability
A well-executed RPP provides a road map to measure performance, resolve reliability problems, and achieve a high level of reliability that meets desired requirements and cost targets.
Resources are always a constraint, that’s why an effective RPP allows an organization to prioritize their efforts to focus on the right activities at the right time in order to maintain high reliability of their aircraft or assets.
The U.S. Department of Defense demands highly-reliable systems & products to achieve its mission at an affordable cost. Therefore, DoD adopted ANSI/GEIA-STD-0009 “Reliability Program Standard for Systems Design, Development, and Manufacturing,” to align best practices of reliability management, design and testing with reliability methods that provide the most value and the least risk in terms of achieving reliable products.
By maintaining or increasing the overall reliability of your aircraft or critical assets, you can help ensure your asset utilization will remain high and that your sustainment costs will be optimized. An effective Reliability Program Plan is the foundation for achieving highly reliable systems.
When is the last time you reviewed and updated your Reliability Program Plan? AACL has experience developing and maintaining reliability program plans for aircraft, contact us if we can assist you or your organization.