MAINTAINABILITY ALLOCATION METHOD BASED ON TIME CHARACTERISTICS FORCOMPLEX EQUIPMENT

Maintainability allocation is an important step in product quality design. Traditional allocation methods are limited such that the allocated mean time to repair for each unit design apartment cannot be totally controlled by the corresponding design apartment. This paper proposesa new time characteristics-based maintainability allocation method to solve the aforementioned problem. The relationship between design content and repair time is considered in this method, and repair time is divided into common and individual repair time. Common repair time, which isdetermined by the overall system design, is deducted from the total repair time. Individual repair time is allocated to the specific unit through proper traditional allocation method. A case study is performed, and results demonstrate that the new method is more suitable and effective than original methods in terms ofmaintainability allocation.