RAMS 2019 Recap

By Stephen Brunner

ALE attended and participated in this year’s Reliability and Maintainability Symposium (RAMS) at Walt Disney World the week of January 28th. This well-attended four-day annual event addresses a broad spectrum of topics, including R&M requirements, mission critical design and acquisition areas aimed at policies, technologies, lessons learned, modeling, simulation, and training. Industry, academia, and Governments are all represented as attendees and presenters. Every person I met had a desire to understand and influence where the industry is headed, and leave the conference better equipped to participate in the product development process with an R&M focus.

As with every RAMS conference, the sessions were highlighted by paper presentations that provided insights to the cutting edge of Reliability, Maintainability, Availability and System Safety analysis and interpretation of analysis results. The best and brightest minds are being applied to support industry’s hunger for better reliability and product useful life. The myriad of presentations included sessions on modeling, analysis techniques, diagnostics and monitoring, and testing approaches, with a backdrop of tutorial sessions intended to provide basic knowledge on the state of the art in R&M subjects.

ALE presented two papers and conducted a two-hour tutorial session on “Intro to System Safety.” Unlike some of the papers focused on a very specific subject or analysis, ALE’s presentations focused on effective management approaches dealing with parts selection from a reliability perspective, and practical application of a Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) program for a gas turbine engine development program. All of the information presented was very well received and generated further discussions after the sessions. It was extremely rewarding to network with fellow professionals that were excited about making a difference on their programs, both influencing designs for reliability and increasing their meaningful contribution to product development.

I would encourage other R&M professionals who are active in the industry to not only attend this worthwhile educational event, but to write a paper about how you are impacting programs to be presented during next year’s event – RAMS 2020 in Palm Springs, CA. Check out the RAMS website for the current “Call for Papers” – www.rams.org.