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The terms used in most engineering technologies tend to be physical characteristics such as speed, rate of turn, and fuel consumption. While they may require very careful definition and control of the way in which they are measured, the terms themselves are not subject to different interpretations. Reliability, Maintainability, and Supportability (RMS) however, use terms that are defined in a variety of ways with multiple interpretations. The variety of definitions given to a single term creates problems when trying to compare the performance of one system to another. To eliminate the confusion, a literature search that listed current and past RMS terms and definitions was conducted. The literature search included input from the US Military, UK Military, NATO, SAE, IEEE, NASA, ISO, University Research, and other publications. The object was to determine the common definition of Reliability Terms from a variety of sources.

The terms used in most engineering technologies tend to be physical characteristics such as speed, rate of turn, and fuel consumption. While they may require very careful definition and control of the way in which they are measured, the terms themselves are not subject to different interpretations. Reliability, Maintainability, and Supportability (RMS) however, use terms that are defined in a variety of ways with multiple interpretations. The variety of definitions given to a single term creates problems when trying to compare the performance of one system to another. To eliminate the confusion, a literature search that listed current and past RMS terms and definitions was conducted. The literature search included input from the US Military, UK Military, NATO, SAE, IEEE, NASA, ISO, University Research, and other publications. The object was to determine the common definition of Reliability Terms from a variety of sources.