System Requirements Decomposition and Allocation: Achieving Satisfactory R&M

Increased emphasis on mission effectiveness of military helicopters requires a comprehensive Reliability and Maintainability (R&M) approach tightly coupled with the overall System Engineering (SE) process. Within the DoD framework early R&M activities include the development of the R&M strategy to improve the helicopter system performance while satisfying the specified R&M and cost requirements. R&M and cost trade-off studies must be performed as part of the overall System Engineering (SE) process. Alignment of the R&M and the overall SE process is critical for the effectiveness of the SE implementation ensuring the required helicopter system performance characteristics including R&M requirements are achieved. This paper provides an overview of the R&M requirements decomposition and allocation using the helicopter System Breakdown Structure (SBS), followed by a case study to demonstrate an application of a decomposition method where hardware components are grouped together either based on common functions using Math Model Code (MMC) structure.