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ASENT Features
Reliability Predictions
ASENT’s Reliability Manager – the cornerstone of the entire toolkit – contains some key usability features: a powerful product tree editor, the ability to import almost any file format, quick access to part data, prediction tools for both operating and non-operating failure rates, derating analysis, sensitivity analysis, a mission profiler, comprehensive reporting features, and a powerful replicate function. This replicate feature alone can save an enormous amount of time when updating designs with many common modules. ASENT includes many of the most popular prediction methods used for calculating both operating and non-operating failure rates. Other companies charge extra for these methods, but they are all standard with ASENT. When performing calculations, failure rate status flags are clearly displayed next to each item in your product tree structure. When failure rates have been calculated, these flags alert the user to any potential problems. Also, calculation dates are displayed for all assemblies so that you know when the last update was made at a glance. The latest version includes expanded support for user defined fields, graphical reports, and custom reports. The entire BOM for your product tree can be easily imported from Excel and then outputed in this same format, if you like, by using the new product tree report. 
ASENT’s bi-directional interface to SRC's PRISM tool and RIAC’s 217Plus tool provide several advantages:
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RBD Analysis
ASENT’s RBD Analysis tool allows you to model a system, using either the Mission Reliability approach or the Reliability with Repair approach to determine system reliability, either in terms of probability of mission success or in terms of Mean Time Between Critical Failure (MTBCF) and Mean Time To Restore Functionality (MTTRF). You can perform sensitivity studies as functions of time, discrete events (firings, launches, etc.), system architecture, item reliability or item maintainability. The tool supports elements modeled in series, parallel, series-parallel combinations, and complex active or standby redundancies. Tradeoffs can be quickly performed to identify a system’s critical functions and reliability choke points as well as determining logistic factors, such as Available Preventive Maintenance Time, System Availability, Logistics (Serial) Reliability.  As the Reliability Product Tree is updated, the RBD Analysis is automatically updated and is easily visible from the product tree! A suite of utilities is provided to maximize your productivity including a completeness checker, a utility to initially populate, or quickly change the data of all the RBD blocks. The Reliability Modeling Worksheet provides a convenient means to quickly tailor or update your model. The RBD Analysis Report presents your analysis, with block diagrams and supporting tables in Excel format. Armed with this information, you have an early opportunity to improve your system design. For more complex system models or to conduct simulations of the system reliability model, ASENT provides an interface to ARINC’s RAPTOR+ reliability modeling tool. The interface pre-populates the data for the RBD model nodes with both reliability and maintainability data. This gives RAPTOR users a significant productivity lift. 
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FMEA / FMECA
ASENT offers the most robust FMECA capability on the market today. With true relational integrity between causes, failure modes, and next effects, you can be assured of the accuracy of your analysis results. You can specify multiple next effects and end effects for each failure mode. The built-in library of part types, along with failure modes and failure mode distributions, greatly reduces the time involved during piece-part level FMECA. ASENT’s FMECA tools support functional, hardware, or combined FMECAs. With the unique ability to specify a function and then link the function to a group of board parts, ASENT allows you to effectively model depot-level isolation and repair activities.  ASENT lets you perform top-down or bottom-up FMECAs, and gives you the flexibility to enter data as it becomes available rather than in a forced order. Assemblies, parts, and signals can be modeled along with the related failure modes and effects. The relationship between failure modes, effects, and the tree structure are tracked automatically so that updates are easy to make at any time. After the updates have been completed, failure mode ratios and criticality numbers can be recalculated and new reports generated with the simple tap of a key. Often, the tree structure used in performing a FMECA differs from the hardware tree used for a reliability prediction. Because of this, ASENT provides full tree editing capability in the FMECA Manager. The reliability tree can be used to whatever extent desired, but you have the flexibility to deviate from it when needed. New features make it even easier to identify critical items, critical failure modes and safety hazards, and develop and document recommended actions to mitigate their effect. Since the FMECA process can be a considerable documentation effort, ASENT’s powerful Completeness Checker helps to assess your FMECA status at a moment’s notice and identify any missing data – another great time saver! |
RCM Analysis
ASENT's Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) tool is fully integrated into the FMECA, giving you a head start in your analysis, as much of the critical data is already defined. This integrated approach also simplifies future updates and maintenance for subsequent deliveries, as changes in the product structure, failure rates, failure modes, effects and criticalities automatically flow into the RCM analysis! You can conduct analysis using the methodologies of ATA MSG-3, ASD S4000M, Mil-Std-2173, UK MoD MSG-3, or NAVAIR 00-25-403. The questionnaire logic is fully automated for these methods and includes a full task analysis suite to allow you to define the types of RCM tasks for each failure mode. The task analysis suite provides you with extensive capabilities to add explanatory notes to any and all tasks as well as full control over the order of the presentation of the tasks. Often, the RCM results for one failure mode will be applicable to others. ASENT provides you a capability to quickly copy the RCM results, and RCM tasks, to one or more failure modes. A full set of report formats are provided for each RCM method, in Excel format, for easy inclusion into customer deliverables. The RCM results are also part of the LSAR export, providing extensive documentation in the BG table of the RCM analysis.   |
Testability
The testability tab of the FMECA Manager allows you to make use of the FMECA product tree structure and data, and provides a means to enter fault detection/isolation and false alarm rate information for failure modes. You can easily build the isolation list from a dropdown list of items that are applicable for each ambiguity group, and order them by failure rate or other criteria. Normally, this information is entered only at the lowest level of the product tree structure, and all intermediate values are calculated by ASENT. ASENT’s powerful Library Editor allows you to define detection/ isolation groups (IBIT, PBIT, visual, test points, etc.) and populate the test code library. Test codes can be organized into categories (hardware, software, etc.) for easy reference, and default false alarm rates can be specified for each test code. ASENT will quickly calculate fault detection/ fault isolation percentages, and false alarm rates for each group. You can easily see how test coverage stacks up in comparison to your design or customer requirements.  The above screen shows where Test Points J1-62/J1-20 on the SRA are used to detect a LOSS OF 5 VOLTS A AND B failure, isolating the failure cause to components C0003 and F0001.  This screen shows how you might set up detection/isolation groups. Here, various flavors of BIT are listed along with a VISUAL group and test points for both WRAs and SRAs. Also you can define Isolation Group Sizes. For example, group 6 represents test points on the SRA. This example shows groups that isolate to 4 or fewer components, 8 or fewer components, or 10 or fewer components. Below shows a Test Coverage Summary report. You can turn on or off a wide variety of options when generating testability reports, so that only information that interests you is output.  ASENT’s testability completeness checker will identify any missing or incomplete data. This saves time and effort, and provides extra assurance that the results are accurate and complete. You will appreciate the wide range of available reports. Whether you need a quick summary of test coverage for a certain group, or a detailed report that slices the data a certain way, ASENT has it covered. ASENT allows you to copy testability data from one failure mode to one or more failure modes with only a few mouse clicks. This can save considerable time when performing analysis on areas of your design with similar detection/isolation criteria. Alternate tests can be defined in order to perform trade studies.  ASENT’s Testability Analysis capability is an integral part of its R&M tool suite. The product tree structure and failure rates are readily available, along with FMEA/FMECA data. Whether it is your Testability Group or your Maintainability Group that is interested in analyzing your design’s test coverage, they will enjoy the benefits of ASENT’s integrated solution. Its client/server architecture supplies additional benefits by providing concurrent access to project data for a wide range of engineering disciplines. This reduces cycle time by allowing many of the analyses to be performed in parallel. |
Maintainability
The ASENT Maintainability toolkit has been optimized to reduce data entry and maximize the use of existing reliability data to help you efficiently manage the maintainability analysis process. All necessary tools are included to assist in your analysis. The product tree structure and reliability prediction data is readily available in ASENT’s Maintainability toolkit, but you can quickly and easily add covers or other hardware often excluded from reliability predictions. Both Corrective and Preventive Maintenance analyses are supported. ASENT calculates maintenance times (both mean and maximum, e.g., MTTR and MMaxCT) and outputs the result in both minutes and hours. Organizational, intermediate, and depot levels of repair are fully supported for procedures II and V of MIL-HDBK-472. The tool’s powerful “what-if” mode instantly models the impact of various design and maintenance tradeoffs in real time. ASENT’s built-in task libraries (MIL-HDBK-472 and RADC-TR-84-165) greatly reduce the time spent entering data. Also, since replacement tasks are often the same as remove tasks, only listed in reverse order, ASENT allows you to enter these with a single click of the mouse. .jpg) The tasks are then automatically entered and the appropriate task times are pulled from ASENT’s built-in task time libraries. When you combine this information with customizable Task Libraries, and the ability to enter Judgments as difficulty factors for working in hard-to-reach or adverse conditions, you get a powerful combination of maintenance planning tools. ASENT provides you the capability to generate groups of tasks, detailed at a lower level and used as a single line item at higher levels. This prevents your documentation from becoming unwieldy. For example, a task group could represent an engine repair, which contains many individual tasks. This task group could be used on many different predictions, but if changes are needed, you only need to modify the engine repair task group in one location and everything else is now up-to-date. Inherent, achieved, and operational availability are calculated as part of the analysis and are prominently displayed, along with other analysis results on the prediction results screen. With ASENT, the analysis results are consolidated on one easy-to-read page, so the affect on your system can be quickly determined. The Maintainability tool comes with an extensive suite of reports. ASENT’s comprehensive reporting allows you to quickly slice the data, so that you can view just the information you want. The convenient Excel format makes it particularly easy to incorporate outputs into customer deliverables. Prediction results at a glance, built-in task time libraries and images, a familiar spreadsheet interface, the flexibility to add judgments and difficulty factors, and extensive modeling capabilities all help put ASENT’s Maintainability Toolkit into a class by itself. .jpg)
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Thermal Analysis
ASENT’s Thermal Analysis tool leverages pioneering work in the physics of failure based analysis. This tool can help you proactively affect your board design by performing trade studies based on component placement, power dissipation, packaging, mounting technology, board composition, and cooling design. Five different cooling methods are available. You can quickly identify or validate thermal-related problems, and identify and quantify potential solutions. The graphical analysis display lets you see the results, graphically showing vital information such as failure rate, stress, power consumption, and temperature (i.e., case, junction, layer, and substrate). A powerful editing feature comes standard with this tool, which allows you to quickly change the board outline, composition, or component placement. When defining the board composition, you can create special regions of material or cutouts on board layers. Fully definable plated-thru holes, vias, and fin structures may also be added to assist with selected cooling methods.  Thermal results are used by the reliability prediction when calculating failure rates, thereby improving the accuracy of the prediction model. |
Spares Modeling
The Spares Model Tool calculates both the initial spares, replenishment spares and cost required to maintain your system for a given operating scenario and period of performance. The tool allows you to conduct sensitivity analyses to reduce the total support cost by optimizing spares mix and highlights the items where reliability improvement would produce the greatest cost savings.   The tool is automatically populated with data for assemblies that you have identified in the product tree, and generates a Microsoft Access database (mdb file) where you can perform your sensitivity analyses. If analysis is not required, or another tool is to be used, the Microsoft Excel output option allows rapid transfer of the assembly data from ASENT to the person or tool performing the analysis.  |
Logistics
Raytheon offers a family of world-class COTS software products (ASENT, EAGLE, AIMSS, MMIS) that provide total support for your programs. EAGLE is one of ASENT’s sister tools and provides a complete logistics solution, from building logistics data and maintaining existing databases to providing reports, technical manuals, and other post-production support. With ASENT, you have complete control of the data exchanged between ASENT and EAGLE. You can easily generate a full file to initially populate your EAGLE database or just export the changes. 
The ASENT product tree structure, failure rates, MTBF values, FMEA/FMECA data, RCM analysis results, maintenance tasks and times, and availability results can quickly and easily be passed to EAGLE. 
In today’s environment, it is becoming more common for customers to field existing products longer. This creates a demand for upgrades and redesigns of existing products. Because of this, the ASENT/EAGLE solution provides a huge productivity lift by allowing you to import existing program data from EAGLE into ASENT. This allows users to perform tradeoffs and additional design analysis in ASENT and quickly assess the impact on their system. In summary, the automated exchange of data between ASENT and EAGLE can save a tremendous amount of time and energy. While most tools advertise some ability to pass LSAR data, only ASENT and EAGLE provide full-featured import/export capabilities that are quick and easy to use. |
FRACAS
ASENT's FRACAS Tool provides the collaborative and intuitive approach of ASENT to the Failure Reporting and Corrective Action System (FRACAS) discipline. Based on the Microsoft SQL Server database, this tool provides real time data sharing and a robust centralized data repository capable of supporting large numbers of users who are geographically dispersed. The graphical, intuitive nature of the tool is extended to allow you to store memos, email, pictures, drawings and other graphics with failure reports and also with hardware or software items! You can store this data in the database and any other authorized user for the project can view or download the graphical or text data to a file. A simple Drag and Drop approach make chaining events or rearranging chains simple and straight forward.  The unique capability to build a hardware or software inventory from the failure reports as they are recorded means that there is no need to load data before you use the tool. You only need to manage the hardware or software items that you are interested in. The recently added Data Analysis function allows you to perform Weibull Data Analysis and quickly perform trade-offs associated with Warranty Analysis. You can also perform Reliability Growth Testing using Duane or AMSAA plots. Since many programs have unique, project specific requirements, ASENT's FRACAS tool allows you to enter as many user defined fields as you need. This gives you the flexibility to easily manage additional descriptions or data over and above the core FRACAS data common to all programs. The extensive reporting capability of the ASENT FRACAS tool provides unmatched flexibility, providing report outputs in Excel and Word format. Summary reports containing information on many failure reports or in-depth reports for a single failure report are available. The reports make it simple to generate a complete life history on any piece of equipment or software! The ASENT FRACAS Tool provides you the capability to build a list of team members who will be conducting failure investigation and maintains a complete history of the assigned actions, and their results with each failure report. The notification of actions is automated, allowing you to notify team members by email, using your chosen email tool, with a few clicks of the mouse. The Actionee report allows you to quickly identify how many action items are open and who has open action items in addition to what the open action items are. ASENT is coupled with Microsoft’s® SQL Server® to deliver more database horsepower than other R&M tools on the market. The client/server architecture was specifically designed to handle reams of program data, and allow multiple users concurrent access to the same project data. Analyses can be performed in parallel, even when teammates are geographically dispersed, and designers can retrieve information immediately after it is entered. ASENT eliminates the hassle of transferring files and combining data and ensures you are always working with the current design. In addition to offering extensive report formats and a user-defined reporting capability, ASENT’s open architecture allows you to quickly create customized reports. IT Departments will be pleased with the power and flexibility that the ASENT FRACAS tool provides. It can be installed either as a thick client or a thin client. The thin client alternative, loaded on Citrix, greatly reduces the need to install client software, and provides web access for end users To complement ASENT, Raytheon offers EAGLE and AIMSS. These products work together to provide total product supportability analysis and documentation capabilities.
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