Production, Quality & Manufacturing

Maintainability Demonstration

Maintainability Demonstration (M-Demo) is a formal process conducted by the product developer and the end customer to determine whether specific maintainability contractual requirements have been achieved (i.e., MTTR, MDT, MMH/OH, etc.) during fielded operation. The M-Demo would be implemented to verify by demonstrating the actual maintainability characteristics of a system, against the maintainability requirements or objectives. It requires a formal test plan to be developed that uses defined methods of analysis to determine compliance. Mil-HDBK-470A Appendix B Section 3.1/(Mil-Std-471 Cancelled) provides a detailed approach to this technique. [1]

Guide: DoD Reliability Availability and Maintainability (RAM) Guide

The M-Demo should also identify potential problems in the implementation of specific maintenance tasks, hence find fixes prior to fielding the system. The results of the M-Demo could also serve to provide feedback to the Logistic Support Analysis Engineering Effort.

The M-Demo is done by scheduling and execution of a demonstration test wherein maintenance tasks are performed at a specified level of maintenance (e.g., organizational, intermediate, depot) by personnel having the skill levels available or required in the fielded maintenance environment. For each maintenance task performed, where a typical task is to isolate and repair a failed unit, the time required to perform the maintenance task is recorded. Depending on the maintainability index being demonstrated, and the test plan is chosen, once a statistically significant number of tasks are performed, the collected data are then used to determine if the maintainability is acceptable or not. [2]

The demonstration test is defined as a set of numerical requirements and associated risk levels that will govern the design and decision criteria of the demonstration test. For the test plans to be described, this specification involves decisions regarding the following:

  •  Type of maintainability index to be specified
  •  Acceptable and unacceptable values of the index
  •  Associated risk levels

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Updated: 8/4/2021

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