TABLE OF CONTENTS The initial supportability engineering activities culminate with delivery of the system. After delivery, focus shifts to sustaining the mission capability of the system. There are several areas where sup-portability engineering should have a significant participation throughout the operational life of the system. These are shown at Figure 14-1. The first area, operation and support information collection, is necessary to perform all the other activities indicated. The basis for all in-service supportability engineering activities is to achieve all the goals, thresholds, and constraints developed during acquisition. Every supportability characteristic developed and used during product design should be measurable in service. It is extremely difficult to receive the full benefit from in-service supportability engineering without this as the basis for all activities.
All decisions made during acquisition of the system were based on goals, thresholds, and constraints that were developed through comparison with similar systems, historical data on previous systems, and predictions of possible future results. Now that the system has entered service, it is necessary to collect information about what really happens. All information collected must be accurate, timely, represented in a way that is conducive to analysis, and most important, believable. Every organization has its own preferred method of in-service information collection; however, at a minimum, any information-collection system should address the points listed at Figure 14-2. There should be an appropriate place to capture all the information collected. ISO 10303, Standard for Exchange of Product Model Data (STEP), contains Application Protocol...
