Software driven optimal design for maintenance man hour

Abstract

Cost of ownership of a capital item, increases exponentially, as the age of the equipment increases. Maintenance efforts involved in optimally maintaining the item procured, is determined predominantly by the Mean Time Between Failure [MTBF], Mean Time to Repair [MTTR] in addition to the required Man Hours. Knowing the faults and prognostics prior to failures will result in significant reduction in down time and the cost of maintenance. Software plays vital role in this regard, along with the required instrumentation in capturing and forecasting the anticipated failures and inform well in advance the maintenance requirements of the particular item. This paper describes in detail about designing an item, with the perspective of optimizing the maintenance efforts and cost, by using software techniques as one of the design parameters. MMH/OH is one among the terminologies used to describe, the amount of efforts required in terms of time, to operate a system [fly an aircraft/drive a car] for an hour in the normalized scale. Starting with the allocation of MMH/OH target, to systems, subsystems and LRUs [Line Replaceable Unit], realization of the target MMH/OH is dealt with, in detail, using software enabled control and communication. The proposed model and technique has been validated with a typical fighter aircraft.