Components that fail must either be discarded or repaired. RAM Commander provides you with a flexible module for developing and performing maintainability prediction and analysis.

Maintainability is a measure of how long a product is not available for use. When components are being maintained, they pass through a sequence of repair tasks that transform them from failure status to available status. Such tasks typically fall into the categories of disassembly, diagnosis, repair and reassembly.

RAM Commander allows you to build your own time and task libraries. Standard times are times you define for performing a particular activity. A standard task is a sequence of standard times. You can use standard time and task libraries to compute maintainability times for your system.

RAM Commander allows you to build libraries of skill types, equipment items and material types. You may use these libraries to specify skills, equipment and materials required to perform each maintenance task. From Maintenance Tasks Analysis report you may get a prediction of work load for each skill type and equipment, and usage of materials.

RAM Commander’s maintainability prediction module is based on the recommendations in MIL-HDBK-472, Procedure 5, Method A. The main definitions, models and assumptions presented in this chapter are taken from this document. Refer to MIL-HDBK-472 and MIL-STD-721 for more information on RAM Commander’s maintainability prediction module.

Method A, Procedure 5 of MIL-HDBK-472 is used to predict maintainability parameters for any type of system or equipment, including avionics, ground and shipboard electronics, or mechanical equipment, at organizational, intermediate, depot, supplier and manufacturer  levels of maintenance.

See next paragraphs for a theoretical discussion of maintainability prediction , philosophy and assumptions.