GCS RAMS Engineering Certificate

Speakers are partners of the MTBF Montréal. They are Experts coming from various industries. All of them have previous teaching experience through workshops, seminars or lectures.

Zdzislaw Klim is an Associate Professor and currently teaches reliability at a graduate level in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Polytechnique de Montréal. His research interests are in the fields of systems reliability and maintainability analysis, and safety and risk assessment. He is also an Associate Professor at University of Québec at Trois-Rivières (Canada). He was also a Principal Engineering Specialist in the Department of Reliability, Maintainability and Safety at Bombardier Aerospace for the past 22 years. His responsibilities included reliability and safety analysis for in-service aircraft systems, technical support for new programs and development of the new methods for reliability, safety and cyber security assessment. He holds Bachelor and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering and a Ph.D. in reliability from the Technical University of Wroclaw, Poland. He has more than 35 years of experience in the field of reliability, maintainability and safety analysis. He is the author of more than 50 technical papers and reports. He is a Member of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) and Association of Professional Engineers of Quebec (O.I.Q.).

Ilie Cacipu has over 25 years of experience in design for safety, reliability, availability and maintainability of aircraft systems, in certification reports and processes within A220, CRJ 200/700/900, Challenger 300/604/605, Global Express and Puma programs. He was the Bombardier Aerospace Design for Reliability Coordinator and Technical Knowledge focal during development of A220 (former C Series), program that achieved one of the best reliability at entry into service across the industry. Ilie Cacipu is a member of Industry Design for Reliability WGs (PERM, Physics of Failures Standard).

Dragan Komljenovic received his BSc at the University of Tuzla, Master’s degree at the University of Belgrade, the first PhD at Laval University (Canada) in 2002, and the second PhD at the University of Quebec in Trois-Rivieres (Canada) in 2018. He works as a researcher at the Hydro-Quebec’s Research Institute (IREQ) in the field of reliability, asset management, risk analysis, and maintenance optimization. Prior to joining IREQ, he worked as a Reliability and Nuclear Safety Engineer at the Nuclear Generating Station Gentilly-2, Hydro-Quebec. He was also appointed as Adjunct Professor at the University of Waterloo, Canada (Industrial Research Chair “Risk-Based Life Cycle Management of Engineering Systems”) and Laval University in Quebec-City (mining engineering). He has published more than 70 refereed journal and conference papers. Dragan also worked in the mining industry as well as a researcher and lecturer at the University of Tuzla and Laval University. Dr. Komljenovic is the Fellow of the International Society of Engineering Asset Management (ISEAM).

The past 15 years of reliability and safety related experience exposed Sorin Voiculescu to a wide variety of field cases across several large companies including Bombardier, Airbus, Schlumberger, Peugeot Citroën, ECE Zodiac, Renault, etc. He joined the CSeries project in 2010 and was part of the design, certification and post-entry into service phases of the most recent clean-sheet design airplane in the world. He has a Reliability dedicated PhD from University of Angers, France. He joined Concordia’s Gina Cody School of Engineering in August 2018. He is the Secretary of the Montreal Chapter of the Society of Reliability Engineers and a member of the IEEE Reliability Society.

The Event is an initiative of Dr. Sorin Voiculescu, Lecturer at Concordia University and is organized by Gina Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science.

Dr. Sorin Voiculescu joined Concordia in 2018 after a rich industrial reliability related experience in a variety of field cases across several large companies including Bombardier, Airbus, Schlumberger, Peugeot Citroën, ECE Zodiac, Renault, etc.

With a unique combination of theoretical methods and practical expertise, and based on his joint European and North-American experience, Dr. Sorin Voiculescu is covering technical aspects in all the phases of a design, e.g. contractual negotiations, design trade-offs, verification and validation methods, tailored maintenance, real time health monitoring, etc.

The Event will be held online. An MS TEams account is required, Internet connection, a webcam and a microphone.

Coffe breaks are scheduled at 10:00AM and 2:30PM.

The Certificate is oriented towards the synergy between R-AM-S and the Program as well as the interactions among various teams and departments across the entire Product’s life.

Each topic is first introduced theoretically, then, based on our Instructors’ field experience, each topic is placed within the Program, correlated to the team(s) in charge, and a list of practical implementation challenges and possible solutions is discussed.

Except for the lead free & FIDES predictions, which are specific to electronics, all the topics presented are common to any system engineering branch or domain , e.g.:     aerospace,     applied,     biomedical,     electrical,     energy,     mechatronics,    mechanical,    military,    nuclear,    petroleum,     power plant,     propulsion,    railway,     system,     vehicle, etc.

A special place is reserved for our colleagues, the software engineers. The surge in artificial intelligence and automatization requires increased hardware-software interactions and heavily relies on the exactitude of the sensors’ reading. The logic of a sensor, the ageing effects (e.g. drift), its expected life and possible failure modes, these are all equally important criteria which, in combination with a keen understand of the hardware-generated nuisances, are the foundation for error detection, damage confinement and error recovery leading to a mature fault tolerant software implementation.

The workshops welcome professionals involved at various levels in the life cycle of a product:
- high management,
- specialists,
- integrators,
- designers,
- development and test engineers,
- supply chain,
- maintenance planning, etc.

Reliability in the development(day 1)
  - Reliability maturity assessment
       * A dedicated method to evaluate, using a spider-matrix, the current maturity level of the reliability implementation in a Program or a Company. This method considers all teams, divisions, and positions in the Company (e.g. management, developers, test, customer support, supply chain, etc.)
  - Reliability confidence indicator
       * A method to assess almost in real-time, during the various phases of the design, the level of the confidence in the field reliability of the final product
  - Qualitative testing
       * Methods and tools used to reduce the testing time, the testing sample size and the overall cost and schedule bottleneck of the reliability testing
  - Reliability demonstration process map
       * A field-experience based analysis of the added value of various reliability tools to be used across each phase of a program, depending on functional requirements and input data available
       * Reliability test plan and deliverables
  - RAMS in contracts
       * Field-experience based analysis of contractual RAMS terms

Non-exhaustive list of topics:
           Similarity for reliability
           HALT for design / HASS
           HALT for robustness
           HALT for reliability
           End of life testing
           Qualification testing (vs. reliability)
           Endurance testing
           Reliability confidence indicator
           Reliability program plan – a risk-based approach
           Latent failures
           Dormant failures

Test and data interpretation (day 2)
  - Numerical targets and design evaluation
       * Convert contractual requirements (e.g. cost, safety, etc.) to reliability parameters
  - Quantitative testing
       * An overview of various reliability testing techniques
  - Test plan requirements
       * Tools and methods to build a test plan
  - Data analysis
       * Tools and methods to interpret the results of a test plan

Non-exhaustive list of topics:
           Censored & uncensored data
           Exponential data interpretation
           Weibull data interpretation
           Accelerated testing
           Confidence level and confidence intervals
           Extrapolated testing
           ESS
           Reliability test documentation

System safety (day 3)
  - Safety assessment and product development
       * safety requirement generation and verification
       * activities to support the product design and development
  - Safety tools
       * A comprehensive list of various safety-dedicated tools
  - Certification and various standards
       * Development assurance levels, certification, and standards

Non-exhaustive list of topics:
           FMEA – failure mode and effects analysis
           FHA – functional hazard analysis
           FTA – fault tree analysis
           PR – particular risks
           CCA – common cause analysis
           ZSA - zonal safety analysis

Engineering Asset Management (day 4)
  - Body of knowledge in EAM
  - EAM maturity assessment
       * A dedicated method to evaluate the current level of maturity of the EAM in a Program or a Company.
 - EAM & Maintenance
       * Link between EAM and classical maintenance Note: Asset Management focuses on Total Business Impact and has a broader focus than Managing Assets , encompassing many organizational levels and applying to all functions or departments.

RAMS in 20th century (day 5)
 - System theoretic process analysis
       * An alternate method to identify safety-critical scenarios
 - Monitors validation & verification
       * A patented solution to reduce the risk of nuisances during the design
  - FIDES predictions
       * An overview of the logic of FIDES, compared to other classic methods, e.g. MIL-HDBK-217F
  - Lead-free
       * Lead-free soldering technology particularities and risk-reduction solutions

Regular and student tickets include full access to workshops.
Except for the one-day and two-days tickets, the price includes the Concordia RAMSES certificate.
OIQ regulation respecting mandatory continuing education for engineers: the program’s activities are eligible for 30h of OIQ continuing education if the content is related to your professional activities.
All tickets include the dedicated tools associated to the presented topics.
Participation to the Special event is included.

OIQ regulation respecting mandatory continuing education for engineers: the program’s activities are eligible for 30h of OIQ continuing education if the content is related to your professional activities.

Globalization and strong competition are part of a typical operational and business environment. The ability of enterprises to create and implement innovative concepts is decisive to meet the demands regarding competitiveness, and to ensure their operations and further development.

RAMS is part of any engineering, such as mechanical, electrical, hydraulic, electronic, software, human factors, etc. It is also part of any phase of a project, starting from case study, going through design, prototype validation, production, operational maintenance.

It has been proven that having a company-wide RAMS culture implemented always brings long-term benefits: low maintenance costs, increased customer satisfaction, optimized maintenance schedule or increased sales are just some of them.

The RAMS engineer is responsible for setting up the process and employing the best techniques to use.

The senior management's role is to ensure an environment where the team keeps reliability, safety and quality goals clearly in mind. The management should encourage all members of the team to use the appropriate RAMS methods and principles.

The applicability of dedicated RAMS techniques and methods goes down to engineering level. Every single engineer should employ the techniques proposed by the reliability engineers and approved by management through the reliability, safety and maintainability program plan.

If you want to improve reliability and reduce risk, to reduce the life cycle costs of the product, to improve and protect the brand image by reducing warranty costs and customer complaints, to optimize maintenance strategies, to improve availability or to assess and improve safety, to contribute to a greener planet (higher reliability = less disposal), then you need the GCS RAMS Certificate.

RAMS - June 2019