Annual Reliability and Maintainability Symposium (RAMS) 2010

Reliability, maintainability, and safety have never been more crucial in the design, the development and the operation of components systems, and networks. Customers expect that products and services be nearly 100% reliable. Products and services that do not reach beyond existing reliability standards will lose market share, particularly in the current economic climate. In order to attain this level of reliability, approaches that transcend existing approaches are needed.

In communications, energy, space, defense, transportation, and medicine, reliability is becoming the paramount property. In communications, networks must be designed to minimize outages even during natural disasters like Hurricane Ike and Hurricane Gustav. In defense, reliability failures can lead to complete mission failures and the loss of lives. In energy, designing reliable renewable energy sources is the newest challenges. In the manufacturing environment, “reliability is king.”

Collecting and using data on the reliability, performance and security of products and services is the scientific way to make improved reliability operational. Many of the new approaches will utilize different types of data and many more sources of data simultaneously. And finally, there are important new theoretical insights in all of these areas that can help others achieve advancements in the science and engineering of reliability, maintainability, and safety.