Modelling service support system reliability

Functional Products, where the customer pays for the function and availability of a product instead of the product itself, are increasingly popular in capital intensive industries such as aerospace. Such products are integrated systems involving the combination of hardware and service support systems. The reliability prediction and optimisation of the service system that supports the hardware availability is essential to the feasibility of the product. These systems consist of maintenance procedures and resource provisions. Simulation based techniques are presented in this paper to analyse the reliability of support systems and their application is demonstrated through a simple example.