Articles

Longer-form writing on PLM, RAMS, and digital engineering.

Practical, depth-first articles drawn from real engineering programs. New articles are added as topics are researched and written, there is no publication schedule.

RAMS CorePublished

Same MTBF, three different products

Ten failures in a thousand hours is an MTBF of 100 hours whether they arrive in the first afternoon, at a steady drip, or all at once at end of life. Those are three different products, and one number cannot tell them apart.

10 min read
RAMS CorePublished

Redundancy on paper, single point in the rack

Two blocks in parallel multiply to a beautiful number. The cabinet they live in often has one power feed, one cooling path and one maintainer. What the block diagram cannot see, and how to put a number on it.

10 min read
RAMS CorePublished

What a reliability prediction is actually for

The predicted MTBF will not match the fleet, and it was never supposed to. What the handbooks actually model, why they disagree with each other, and the questions that make a prediction defensible.

10 min read
RAMS CorePublished

Reading a fault tree like an auditor

A fault tree is an argument dressed as arithmetic. How to read someone else's tree the way an assessor does, top event first, gates as claims, common causes hunted, and every number asked where it came from.

9 min read
RAMS CorePublished

Derating: the cheapest reliability you will ever buy

Run a part below its ratings and the failure mechanisms inside it slow down, no redundancy, no new technology, just margin chosen at design time. How derating works, where it pays most, and when it stops being free.

11 min read
RAMS CorePublished

AI in RAMS analysis: where it helps, and where it must not decide

A practitioner's map of AI in reliability, safety and maintainability work, the tasks it genuinely accelerates, the decisions that stay with the engineer, and the guardrails that keep a safety case defensible.

12 min read
RAMS CorePublished

One model, many methods: why RAMS analyses must be connected

Allocation, prediction, FMECA, fault trees, maintainability, FRACAS, every RAMS method consumes what another produces. Run them disconnected and the numbers drift; connect them and the safety case stays alive.

10 min read
Digital ThreadPublished

RAMS meets requirements: why ALM integration matters

MTBF targets, tolerable hazard rates and safety goals are requirements before they are analyses. Connecting the RAMS toolchain to DOORS, Codebeamer or Jama turns compliance from an assembly job into a living trace.

9 min read
Digital ThreadPublished

Why your RAMS tool must talk to PLM and ERP

The BOM is the spine of every reliability analysis, and it lives in your PLM and ERP systems, not in your RAMS tool. Integration is what keeps the safety case pointed at the product you are actually building.

9 min read