Lessons learned from the general dynamics reliability, availability, and maintainability in computer-aided design-RAMCAD program

RAMCAD is an acronym that stands for “Reliability, Availability and Maintainability in Computer Aided Design”. The objective of this contract is to integrate stand-alone, off-the-shelf, commercially available or public domain reliability, maintainability and supportability (RM&S) software into a computer-aided design environment. The paper describes the RAMCAD contract and its objectives and provides a technical discussion on selected lessons learned and critical issues from implementing standards on the RAMCAD contract. Lessons-learned topics address system portability, common user interface, database access, networking concurrent engineering workstation requirements, and concurrent engineering design process changes