CNSTAT Current Projects: Workshop on Reliability Assessment of Defense Systems in Development

The Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT) convened a one and one-half day workshop on reliability assessment in defense acquisition on June 9-10, 2000. The workshop brought together statisticians and other experts in reliability measurement, industrial experts on how reliability assessment fits into the industrial system development process, experts in reliability measurement for defense systems, and experts in defense acquisition to discuss how reliability assessment can be improved and its potential role in a modified view of defense acquisition.

to explore how changes in reliability methods can reduce testing costs through the use of more appropriate models and how changes in the role of reliability testing in defense acquisition can reduce system life-cycle costs through the development of more reliable systems,
to provide a review of the current methods for reliability assessment,
to identify alternatives to assuming exponentially distributed time between system failures in test planning and estimation, including potential cost savings through use of more appropriate assumptions in test design; combination of information from several sources for reliability assessment; new methods for reliability growth estimation; and new methods and proper use of accelerated life testing,
to assess how reliability assessment should assist in system development, which will include an examination of such issues as the proper priority for reliability assessment in operational test design, the value of large-scale versus more focused operational testing, approaches to archiving both test data and field use data to support feedback loops for system development, and understanding how to improve the process of system development.

A report summarizing the discussions at the workshop is currently in preparation.