5. SAE method (Society of Automotive Engineers)

5.1 Origin and background

At the end of the 1990s, the American Society of Automotive Engineers noted that numerous adaptations of the MBF developed by Nowlan and Heap were appearing in all sectors of activity. After analyzing these adaptations, the SAE concluded: "Many of these methods do not lead to objectives in line with the original MBF approach, and some of them are even counterproductive". As a result, there was an international demand from the industry to establish a standard defining all the criteria that a maintenance method must meet in order to be able to claim the name "MBF method" or classic MBF. SAE has therefore published two SA standards, JA1011