Fides (

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

: ''trust'') is a guide allowing estimated reliability calculation for electronic components and systems. The reliability prediction is generally expressed in FIT (number of failures for 10⁹ hours) or MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures). This guide provides reliability data for RAMS (Reliability, Availability, Maintainability, Safety) studies.

Purpose

Fides is a '' DGA'' (French armament industry supervision agency) study conducted by a European consortium formed by eight industrialists from the fields of

aeronautics Aeronautics is the science or art involved with the study, design process, design, and manufacturing of air flight-capable machines, and the techniques of operating aircraft and rockets within the atmosphere. While the term originally referred ...

and Defence: *

Airbus Airbus SE ( ; ; ; ) is a Pan-European aerospace corporation. The company's primary business is the design and manufacturing of commercial aircraft but it also has separate Airbus Defence and Space, defence and space and Airbus Helicopters, he ...

France *

Eurocopter Airbus Helicopters SAS (formerly Eurocopter S.A., trade name, trading as Eurocopter Group) is the helicopter manufacturer, helicopter manufacturing division of Airbus. It is the largest in the industry in terms of revenues and turbine helicopte ...

Nexter KNDS France (formerly known as Nexter, GIAT Industries or ''Groupement des Industries de l'Armée de Terre'', Army Industries Group) is a French government-owned weapons manufacturer, based in Versailles. The company was wholly government-owne ...

Electronics *

MBDA MBDA is a European multinational corporation specialized in the design, development and manufacturing of Missile, missiles and related systems.Thales Underwater Systems Thales Underwater Systems or TUS (formerly ''Thomson Sintra ASM'', ''Thomson CSF DASM'' and then Thomson Marconi Sonar) is a subsidiary of the French defense electronics specialist Thales Group. It was founded in 2001 and belongs to its naval div ...

The first aim of the Fides project was to develop a new reliability assessment method for electronic components which takes into consideration COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) and specific parts and the new technologies. The global aim is to find a replacement to the worldwide reference MIL-HDBK-217F, which is old and has not been revised since 1995 (issue F notice 2). Moreover, the MIL HDBK 217F is very pessimistic for COTS components which are more and more widely used in military and aerospace systems. The second aim was to write a reliability engineering guide in order to provide engineering process and tools to improve reliability in the development of new electronic systems.

Method content

The Fides guide is made of two distinct parts. The first is a reliability prediction calculation method concerning main electronic component families and complete subassemblies like

hard disks A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...

LCD A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers to display information. Liquid crystals do not em ...

displays. The second part is a

process control Industrial process control (IPC) or simply process control is a system used in modern manufacturing which uses the principles of control theory and physical industrial control systems to monitor, control and optimize continuous Industrial processe ...

and

audit An audit is an "independent examination of financial information of any entity, whether profit oriented or not, irrespective of its size or legal form when such an examination is conducted with a view to express an opinion thereon." Auditing al ...

guide which is a tool to assess the reliability quality and technical know-how in the operating time of the studied product, operational specification and maintenance.

Availability

The Fides guide is freely available on the Fides reliability website.

Standardization

The French standardisation organisation UTE (''Union Technique de l'Electricité'') has accepted the Fides publication, with the reference UTE C 80 811 (available in both French and English). An international normative reference extension (

International Electrotechnical Commission The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC; ) is an international standards organization that prepares and publishes international standards for all electrical, electronics, electronic and related technologies. IEC standards cover a va ...

) is planned for the future.

Future

Fides has met great interest and success since the end of the study in 2004. The method has been quickly declared a standard that can be applied to French military programs. For two years, the French military experts of DGA have already used FIDES method in different major programs for Defence, in missiles or tactical telecommunications fields for example. American companies like

Boeing The Boeing Company, or simply Boeing (), is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product support s ...

, Japanese organisations like

JAXA The is the Japanese national air and space agency. Through the merger of three previously independent organizations, JAXA was formed on 1 October 2003. JAXA is responsible for research, technology development and launch of satellites into o ...

(Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) as well as French companies or organisations like '' EDF'' (''Electricité de France'', French electricity provider) or ''

CNES CNES () is the French national space agency. Headquartered in central Paris, the agency is overseen by the ministries of the Armed Forces, Economy and Finance and Higher Education, Research and Innovation. It operates from the Toulouse Spac ...

'' (''Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales'', the French space agency) showed an interest in FIDES methodology, but none of them are using FIDES at this time. Further developments of the Fides guide (such as the improvement of existing models and the widening of the spectrum covered by component families) resulted in a new version of the Fides guide being published in the middle of year 2009.

References

Sources

* * * * * (Software information sheet)

External links

*Fides guide website
(Requires free registration to obtain the Fides guide in both English and French) {{DEFAULTSORT:Fides (Reliability) Survival analysis Reliability engineering Engineering statistics