5 Reasons your organisation needs Model-based RAMS

As the engineering industry undergoes rapid digitalization, RAMS focused organizations must understand how RAMS will be impacted by digitalization, and what this potentially means to their current ‘way of doing business’. This is essential to validate how can a Model-based approach that digitalizes the RAMS function can generate significant, demonstrable process and product advantages.

So – does your organization need to digitalize its RAMS capabilities?

Here are 5 key reasons why it is important that you have a Model-based approach to RAMS analysis:

1. System Complexity: unrealistic to analyze complex systems with manual process
   With the relentlessly increasing complexity of modern engineering systems, traditional manual methods to identify and analyse the potential technical risk in a design configuration and then authoring this into a tool are no longer practical (or realistic). However if you don’t efficiently identify and mitigate potential technical risks during the design process – you can’t efficiently design, certify, produce or support your system.
   
   
2. Distributed Organization Structures: remote workers require digital collaboration
   COVID, the industry acceptance of segmented design responsibility (‘design enterprises’ involving the supply chain) and the cost advantages of a ‘work from home’ employee base have accelerated the trend to working environments where an engineer will most likely not be physically co-located with their colleagues. This requires technology to ensure that data, analysis methods and processes are consistent, reliable and efficient when used in a distributed workplace environment.
   
   
3. Digital Domain Knowledge (DDK): learn from your mistakes on previous programs
   If you don’t efficiently capture and then leverage the knowledge and experience of your team (the high value intangible asset that it represents), you lose it when they walk out the door each night (or log-off in a distributed environment). The ability to integrate DDK into a Model-based RAMS solution is particularly important in industries where there is an ‘experience gap’ in the age profile of your team and for long-life programs (to communicate design intent and decision inputs).
   
   
4. Digital Transformation: you are only as digital the manual elements of your process
   All aspects of a process must be digital to achieve the advantages of digital transformation (any analogue steps in the process obviously limit the expected ‘digital dividends’). If you don’t introduce a Model-based approach to RAMS it will reduce the overall potential benefits of a digital transformation project – and these potential negative impacts increase proportionally with system complexity.
   
   
5. Cost benefits / ROI: realize demonstrable cost, schedule and technical benefits
   There are demonstrable cost, schedule and technical benefits for an organisation that implements a Model-based approach to RAMS. While the specific Return on Investment and the expected payback period will vary based on the specific circumstances of an organization, the Cost Benefit Analysis should reflect the potential cost advantages in the design process (automation of analyses reduces resource / schedule cost for Reliability analyses during design) and during operations (increased system Reliability leads to lower maintenance requirements and lower Cost of Ownership).

The benefits of digitizing your RAMS does not stop with these 5 key reasons. The push towards industry 4.x has meant the steps in the engineering design process have been digitized, not for the sake of maturity, but for the sake of moving beyond enhanced productivity towards higher agility, real-time opportunities, the development of an innovative capability and true innovation. However to take full advantage of this trend organizations must consider seriously the entire PLM process and ensure that every step is digitzed, including that of the RAMS function. A critical component, not only in the design of increasing complex systems, but also the core data that asset operation and performance is built around when in field.

If the essential goal of Industry 4.0 is to make PLM process faster, more efficient and more customer-centric, while at the same time going beyond automation and optimization and detect new business opportunities and models, then leaving your RAMS undigitzed will limit and organisations abilty to compete in future markets where digitization is the building block.

So this begs the obvious question, what state of digitalization is your RAMS function in your organization?

PHM Technology has been developing a model-based RAMS platform to digitize and improve the quality of the RAMS function since 2006. Our solutions are used by organizations that design some of the most complex systems in the world for aerospace and defence applications – including NASA, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin.