A fresh approach to supportability engineering

Changes in the market for our products, and changes in our customers expectations (i.e. our business environment) will require significant changes in our approach to delivering reliable supportable products if we are to remain competitive. The traditional approaches to supportability engineering (reliability, maintainability and logistics engineering) must evolve to methodologies which are consistent with the emerging environment. Application of new methodologies will require new roles and responsibilities for specialists in the technical disciplines which comprise supportability engineering. To encourage thinking about fresh methodologies, we have examined difficulties associated with the traditional methodologies to determine what must be changed, and have outlined an approach which we believe to be consistent with the emerging environment. In the extreme, we believe that key elements of the traditional process-numerical requirements, predictive analysis and feedback to design, and qualification testing-will have to be abandoned in favor of a process which is highly concurrent with design. We outline trends in the business environment, examine conflicts with key elements of the traditional supportability engineering process, propose an alternative approach; and we show how key elements of the fresh approach support the emerging environment. We conclude with some observations on the roles and responsibilities, and on the skills required in the emerging environment.