Maintenance Related IEC Dependability Standards

Abstract

Within the International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC, there exists a committee, named IEC Technical Committee 56 “Dependability”, TC56 for short. Its history can be traced back to 1965, when the Reliability and Maintainability Committee was formed. In 1990, after contacts with ISO, it was decided that the IEC/TC56 should be responsible for standardization in the field of dependability, in any appropriate technological area, including those normally considered as outside the scope of IEC. The term “dependability” is a collective term, used to describe availability performance and its constituent factors reliability performance, maintainability performance, and maintenance support performance. Within the IEC/TC56 a number of maintenance related standards and guidelines have been produced, covering e.g. maintainability of equipment, reliability-centred maintenance, integrated logistic support, and also an application guide entitled “Maintenance and maintenance support”. Also, Chapter 191 of the International Electrotechnical Vocabulary, freely available on the Internet, contains a wealth of maintenance-related terms. This paper is intended to give an overview of the standards available and some insight into the ongoing efforts within IEC/TC56 to produce new standards and to maintain existing ones. It should not be seen as an official promotion of the IEC Dependability Standards series. Instead, it presents some personal experiences and reflections on the use and usefulness of the standards series.