How does reliability in design affect logistics?
Answer:
I have worked in two fields where design reliability and logistics have a close relationship. In telecommunications, we spend quite a bit of time estimating thing like mean-time-between=failure (MTBF) and mean-time-to-repair (MTTR) and availability (downtime per year). These numbers affect the number of spare parts that are needed, the number of repair personnel required, the expected downtime (monitored by government agencies), and the cost we of delivering this level of service to the customers. We frequently add redundancy and testing capability to our products to ensure that if something fails, it fails in a manner that can be detected and will affect the fewest people possible.
I also have worked for the military. They have similar needs to the telecommuncations industry in terms of high reliability and testability. They also have some unique problems. One major issue was the need to stockpile weapons for many years, yet to be sure they work properly when needed. This required "stockpile surveillence." We would analyze the weapons to determine how many should be pulled from storage every year for testing (often practice shots) and to ensure that if problems developed in storage they would be fixed. This required a major testing infrastructure to perform the evaluaton work and it required service personnel to do the maintenance. In some cases, the weapons needed to be stored under special conditions (powder for guns). In other cases, multiple weapons were carried because one may fail and require another one to be instantly ready. All these concerns affected logistics.
For military work, we always needed to ensure that the equipment could be reliably packed for shipment on the various types of cargo vehicles. This could be trucks, ships, airplanes or helicopters. Often the equipment had to be assembled in the field after transport. This meant designing the equipment so that it could not be misassembled.
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