Achieving shared accountability for operational availability attainment

The operational availability (A_o) of an end-item is typically a key performance requirement for the operator of fleets of complex end-items such as an aircraft. The determinants of the A_u of an end-item include two fundamental sets of operational unavailability (A_u) drivers: those associated with the design of the end-item; and those associated with the design of the services through which logistics resources required in the conduct and control of end- item maintenance are to be provided. The first set of A_u drivers includes the R&M characteristics of, and maintenance program construct for, the end-item. Regardless who performs the maintenance, for a given usage, there will be a predictable amount of inherent time required for the active conduct of maintenance inclusive of time required to: set-up and use available support and test equipment; find technical data relevant to a task; and record maintenance actions taken. Such factors are typically controlled by the end-item original equipment manufacturer (OEM). Although logistics resource scaling is dependent upon end-item R&M characteristics, once stabilized, the second set of A_u drivers are controlled by the organizations that perform maintenance or supply the resources required in the conduct of maintenance. Management delays and resource unavailability translate directly into maintenance delay time. A critical first step towards achieving an end-item A_o requirement is for the acquiring organization to understand which A_u drivers it controls and to reserve a level of A_u for itself. The balance will form the basis for the A_u to be satisfied by one or more major end-item suppliers. The most ideal circumstance is for a single OEM-Supplier to be fully accountable for achieving this balance through the integrated application of systems engineering processes to both the end- item and support services it will be r- esponsible for providing to the acquiring organization. This process begins with the derivation and allocation of A_u to each of the end item and applicable support services, cycles through progressive design reviews, and culminates in the verification and validation of the design capability to satisfy allocations agreed to amongst designers. Other than approving final design outcomes, the role of the acquiring organization is simply to ensure the supplier fully understands all associated requirements, constraints and points of interface between the supplier and acquirer. Using the capabilities of many modern Computerized Maintenance Management Systems it is possible to accurately measure the start and end time of each end-item maintenance task, and the start and end time of each discrete delay cause. The measured active maintenance time (MAMT) for a task is determined by the difference between the measured maintenance task time (MMTT) and the sum of all measured maintenance delay times (MMDT). The establishment of a book value for each end-item maintenance task limits the liability of the supplier for MAMT. A normalization process is employed to ensure that the MAMT and MMDT for simultaneous maintenance tasks is reconciled to real time so that the ratio of the sum of normalized measured times to total time (i.e. measured A_u) can be attributed to the organizations accountable for associated A_u drivers. The above framework is being applied within several major capital acquisitions of Canada´s Department of National Defence within which is striving to establish long-term (i.e. 20 year plus) A_o centric performance based contracts with OEM- Suppliers. The outcome that DND hopes to realize, is the cost-effective achievement of shared accountability for the attainment of end-item operational availability requirements.