Managing the reliability of COTS-based military systems

COTS (commercial off the self) equipment use in military systems is increasing. Reliability engineers must change their paradigm to meet the challenges involved with using COTS equipment in military system designs. Systems that use COTS equipment still require reliability engineering efforts. Indeed, reliability tasks are equally as important for systems that employ COTS items as they are for those that use specially designed military equipment. Even though COTS equipment designs are complete, system level reliability efforts must be performed to ensure a reliable system design, and to provide the foundations for effective logistics support. The essential reliability analysis/tasks that must be performed are reliability predictions, system level failure mode effects and criticality analysis (FMECA), failure reporting, corrective action development and reliability verification. Predictions of COTS equipment reliability are essential and often are available from the manufacturer, however some adjustments may be required. A strategy for ESS of COTS equipment is to first accept the product as delivered, monitor failure data for trends, then determine the need for additional screening. FMECAs performed on systems utilizing COTS equipment are limited to consideration of equipment power and interface signal failures. Most COTS equipment manufacturers provide failure analysis and corrective action support for trend failures. Observed MTBF data on COTS equipment is essential to accurately predicting the reliability of future generations of COTS equipment used in similar environments.