AUTOMATION
1) The automatic operation or control of equipment, a process, or a system.
2) The techniques and equipment used to achieve automatic operation or control.
3) The condition of being automatically controlled or operated.
Automation of the complex systems within an aircraft is great and, in this case the operative word is COMPLEX.
Assurance engineering personnel at the factory that produces the individual elements of this complex system must analyze every element within the system. These analyses determine the relative reliability of each component and if necessary how that element effects flight safety.
In some cases where an element can effect flight safety the integrating contractor will specify a failure rate of 10 9 or one failure in a billion hours of operation. When this happens the assurance engineer is forced to use very unrealistic failure rates in the process of the analysis in order to meet the design failure rate. The fact that the assurance engineer states that the part will meet the requirement or possibly exceed the requirement does not come close to the actual reliability of the part.
The integration contractor will then join these parts with wires that have their own failure rates and they will then calculate the overall reliability and by definition systems safety of the combined system
Lets say that the FAA or any other certification authority states that certain system failure rates must meet a minimum of 1 catastrophic failure in a billion hours. In order to meet this failure rate the individual parts within the system must far exceed the 10 9 failure rates. No commercial aircraft flying meets or has ever met this requirement. However if the manufacturers of the individual parts that comprise this automatic system and the integration contractor can show the certification authorities that they have met the safety requirements (showing the numbers) then the certification authorities will certify the system and the aircraft.
Automation can bite you in the ass when you least expect it.
