Reliability and Mission Engineering: Improving Mission Success

Mission engineering and reliability engineering are systems engineering disciplines used throughout product development and sustainment of a system. This paper highlights the commonalities and differences between the two disciplines of mission and reliability engineering. Mission engineering generally lacks standardization and precision of analysis due to less guidance documentation, uncertainty, and data limitations. Reliability analysis can improve the results of mission engineering analysis and thus, should be embedded within mission engineering. A recommendation is to include reliability as a component of the system Measures of Success (MOSs), Measures of Effectiveness (MOEs), and Measures of Performance (MOPs). Additional recommendations are centered around how reliability is represented in a mission engineering architecture and determining a logical approach to improve mission engineering decision capability and outcomes. Conclusions focus on an integrated approach to measuring system and mission effectiveness throughout system design and sustainment.