What is 217Plus/sup TM/ and Where Did It Come From?

In June, 2005 the DoD contract for the Reliability Information Analysis Center (RIAC), formerly known as the Reliability Analysis Center (RAC), was awarded to a five member team comprised of Wyle Laboratories, Quanterion Solutions, the Center for Risk and Reliability at the University of Maryland, the Penn State University Applied Research Laboratory (ARL), and the State University of New York Institute of Technology (SUNY-IT). While the Center name and contractor change have been confusing to the R&M community-at-large, even more confusing has been the introduction of the DoD-funded 217Plustrade methodology and reliability prediction software tool by the RIAC to replace the DoD-funded PRISM^reg tool introduced under the "old" RAC. In July 2006, RIAC released 217Plustrade as the successor to the DoD-funded, Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC)-sponsored Version 1.5 of the PRISM^reg software tool. The RIAC release of 217Plustrade supplemented the six original component models with six new component models connectors, inductors, optoelectronic devices, relays, switches and transformers. Also, for the first time, the 217Plustrade models and methodology were published in the RIAC\´s "Handbook of 217Plus Reliability Prediction Models". The handbook, in a MIL-HDBK-217 style format, details the 217Plustrade methodology and models as a more current replacement for the early-90\´s vintage MIL-HDBK-217. The RIAC charter as a DTIC-sponsored Information Analysis Center (IAC) ensures that DoD funding will continue to support the data collection/analysis and modeling activities that are planned for future 217Plustrade releases and enhancements. This paper describes the evolution, and some of the technical detail, behind the RIAC\´s 217Plustrade methodology.