What is "maintainability"

n. The ease with which something can be maintained.

In engineering, maintainability is the ease with which a product can be maintained in order to:

• isolate defects or their cause,
• correct defects or their cause,
• repair or replace faulty or worn-out components without having to replace still working parts,
• prevent unexpected breakdowns,
• maximize a product's useful life,
• maximize efficiency, reliability, and safety,
• meet new requirements,
• make future maintenance easier, or
• cope with a changed environment.

In some cases, maintainability involves a system of continuous improvement - learning from the past in order to improve the ability to maintain systems, or improve reliability of systems based on maintenance experience.

In telecommunication and several other engineering fields, the term maintainability has the following meanings:

• A characteristic of design and installation, expressed as the probability that an item will be retained in or restored to a specified condition within a given period of time, when the maintenance is performed in accordance with prescribed procedures and resources.
• The ease with which maintenance of a functional unit can be performed in accordance with prescribed requirements.