Practical application of a RAMS analysis for the improvement of the warranty management

Abstract

Abstract This paper will be focused in one of the stages included in a reference framework proposed for the improvement of the warranty management. Particularly, the referred stage will be the RAMS analysis, and how it can help the decision-making related to some aspect of the warranty management as the acquisition of a stategical spare parts stock or how to foresee possible complaints from the customer. For that purpose, the study starts with a brief introduction where the current notion of warranty will be defined, as well as concepts like Reliability, Availabilty, Maintenability and Safety. Later on, once defined very succinctly this framework, the general characteristics of a RAMS analysis will be presented in order to be finally applied in a specific study scenario. In general, this paper aims to explore different aspects related to RAMS analysis, which can influence in the management of warranty assistances. During the process of warranty management for a specific product, many decisions and actions appear affecting aspects as the design quality, used technology, technical complexity, frequency of failures, accessibility, etc. which are important influences on, for instance, the possible expectations to extend the product warranty under reasonable costs. Therefore, this kind of analysis can provide to aftersales managers a useful decision tool that improves the efficiency on the decision-making process related to the spares parts acquisition, the control of failures among others.