Capturing high quality Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability (RAM) performance data requires careful and consistent collection of equipment failure and repair data, operating hours, and repair time. A standard hierarchy of equipment boundaries has been needed for machinery data exchange among the stakeholders in shipbuilding, ship classification, and ship operations.

Industry and government will use a world standard method for setting the hierarchy of indentures and boundaries required for assigning failure and repair events to equipment for the tracking and calculation of equipment RAM performance.

Agreed boundaries and equipment identifiers make it possible to share equipment data among organizations, benchmark equipment performance, perform modeling and simulation of current and proposed systems, or use performance data to improve operations of commercial and Naval vessels.

RAM analysis is primarily based on the observation of individual components among which identical items contribute to the same data sample. This classification is designed to be used for the identification of individual (unique) components in such a way that identical components can be identified within a given data sample.

1.1 This classification is to serve as an international standard for marine equipment nomenclature, taxonomy, hierarchical data structure, unique identifiers, and boundary definition for the consistent acquisition and exchange of equipment RAM performance data. The standard addresses the classification of mechanical and software products.

1.2 RAM in an acronym for Reliability, Availability, & Maintainability where:

1.2.1 Reliability is the probability that an item can perform a required function under given conditions for a given time interval (t1, t2). It is generally assumed that the item is in a state to perform this required function at the beginning of the time interval.

1.2.2 Availability is the probability that an item is in a state to perform a required function under given conditions at a given instant of time, assuming that the required external resources are provided.

1.2.3 Maintainability is the probability that a given active maintenance action, for an item under given conditions of use can be carried out within a stated time interval, when the maintenance is performed under stated conditions and using stated procedures and resources.

1.3 This standard does not purport to address all of the safety concerns, if any, associated with its use. It is the responsibility of the user of this standard to establish appropriate safety and health practices and determine the applicability of regulatory requirements prior to use.