Reliability growth planning under performance based logistics

Product support contracts that envision greater involvement and responsibility from the supplier toward achieving product reliability performance improvements are becoming more common. One type of these contracts is the performance based logistics (PBL). Under the PBL contract, the supplier is commonly asked to structure his reliability and support programs around a defined field availability and/or reliability goal. In some cases, the supplier is required to improve the product's field reliability during the course of the contract while the product is in field use. This paper describes a process for planning and estimating the cost of a reliability improvement program under a performance based logistic (PBL) contract. The process is structured around a repairable system with a fail-replace-repair-use cycles. The planning and estimation process was developed with the intent to minimize the performance and cost risks involved in the execution of the long-term PBL support contract. The process is a structured methodology utilizing past field performance information as a basis for predicting future reliability performance. The methodology makes use of the predictive results as a basis for estimating the level of effort required to satisfy the PBL contract's reliability and availability goals.