RAM and ReliaSoft Training: Building a Shared Baseline for a New Defence Reliability Team

Executive Summary

A defence manufacturer had assembled a new reliability, availability and maintainability (RAM) engineering team to support its platforms through life. It had bought the ReliaSoft suite. Now it needed the team using it well, and working from the same foundations.

SAS-AM combined five of its existing courses into one tailored, five day programme delivered onsite. Theory sat alongside real world examples, case studies and hands on software work. One participant rated it 9 out of 10 and said they would personally recommend SAS-AM as a training provider in logistic support analysis (LSA) and the ReliaSoft suite.

The Challenge

Defence platforms have to be supported for decades. RAM engineering sits at the heart of that. It predicts how often things will fail, shapes the maintenance and spares needed to keep them available, and feeds the logistic support analysis that underpins through life support.

The manufacturer had the right ingredients. Its new RAM team was made up of accomplished, experienced engineers, and it had procured the ReliaSoft Weibull, BlockSim and RCM++ tools. What it lacked was software specific training, and a common grounding in RAM fundamentals to assure competency across the team.

The needs were not uniform. Fourteen people required training across three groups:

• Two engineers needed full RAM fundamentals plus ReliaSoft training
• Six needed reliability block diagram and BlockSim training to support their safety assessments
• Six members of the integrated product support team needed a mix of topics

And the training needed to start as soon as possible.

The Approach

Rather than send people to separate off the shelf courses, SAS-AM adapted five of its existing programmes into one cohesive course built for a defence context: Introduction to Reliability Centred Maintenance, Advanced RCM Practitioner, Defence Reliability Management, Maintenance Engineering Practitioner, and ReliaSoft Practical Training.

One fixed fee, any number of attendees. The programme was priced as a fixed fee, so the client could invite as many people as it liked. That made it easy to bring in people adjacent to the RAM team, so they understood RAM's role through the capability life cycle.

Attend the days that matter. Each group joined the days relevant to its work. The two engineers attended all five days, the safety assessment group attended the first three, and the integrated product support team joined a range of days.

The five days ran as follows:

• Day one, baselining. What RAM is and why it matters, capability measures, reliability, maintainability and availability, RAM across the capability life cycle, mission profiles, writing RAM requirements, maintenance optimisation and reliability programme planning.
• Day two, reliability block diagrams. The core mathematics and probability models (exponential, normal, lognormal and Weibull), series, parallel and redundant systems, a BlockSim tour and exercise, and reliability allocation and prediction.
• Day three, reliability centred maintenance. How RCM works, five common maintenance myths and why they don't hold, maintenance modelling, and lifecycle modelling with a live software demonstration.
• Day four, life data analysis. A five step method for collecting and analysing data, censored data, maintenance modelling, confidence intervals, and design of experiments with a worked example.
• Day five, software use cases. Bringing it together in a RAM model for logistic support analysis, covering system configuration, FMECA, reliability and availability models, RCM based maintenance strategy and logistics requirements.

Training was instructor led and onsite, independent of any vendor, and every participant took home printed course content to refer back to.

The Outcomes

• One programme instead of five. A single, tailored course was built around the needs of fourteen people in three groups, rather than a patchwork of public courses.
• Theory made practical. RAM fundamentals were taught alongside hands on use of the tools the team had just bought.
• A shared language for the team. Everyone started from the same baseline on reliability, availability, maintainability and the capability life cycle.
• Support beyond the classroom. The trainer stayed back after class for discussion and sourced additional reference material for participants.

"SAS (Shane) presented a well planned and tailored training package which provided great advice on LSA along with the practical use of the ReliaSoft software package. The 5 day training package contained lots of theory kept relevant through real world examples and case studies and opportunities for discussion. Shane did not rush out after class but was available for discussion and sourced and provided additional reference materials that he suggested were valuable over the duration. Overall I would personally recommend SAS (Shane) as a training provider in the area of LSA and the ReliaSoft suite of programs."

Training participant, defence manufacturer

What We Learned

1. Fundamentals first, software second. Tools like ReliaSoft only pay off when the people using them understand the reliability engineering underneath.
2. Tailor by role, not by course. Letting each group attend the days relevant to its work kept everyone engaged and made good use of their time.
3. Real examples keep theory alive. Case studies and open discussion turned dense material into something the team could apply.
4. The learning doesn't stop at five o'clock. Time after class and follow up reference material were among the things participants valued most.

Building a RAM or Reliability Team?

SAS-AM delivers tailored, instructor led training in RAM engineering, reliability centred maintenance and the ReliaSoft suite, built around your team and your assets. Contact us to talk through a programme designed for your people.

Project details: Defence · Defence manufacturer · Five day tailored onsite training programme in RAM engineering fundamentals, RCM, life data analysis and ReliaSoft (Weibull++, BlockSim, RCM++).