In 1975/76, Professor Arnljot Høyland, Department of Mathematical Statistics, had a sabbatical year at University of California, Berkeley, USA. Here he met Professor Richard E. Barlow who had just published the seminal book "Statistical Theory of Reliability and Life Testing" (Barlow, R. E. and F. Proschan (1975), Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, New York). When professor Høyland returned to NTNU (NTH at that time), he was very enthusiastic and wanted to start a course in reliability analysis at NTNU, using the book by Barlow and Proschan. He therefore asked Dr. Bent Natvig to prepare a weekly seminar on this topic during the spring semester of 1977. Bent Natvig stayed only a short time and left NTNU during the summer of 1977 - so when the first ordinary course in reliability analysis was to be lectured, professor Høyland had to be the lecturer - with assistance from Marvin Rausand who took over Bent Natvig's position as an assistant professor from 1. September 1977. The following years the reliability course was lectured by Marvin Rausand.
Another contributor to the reliability area was Professor Arne T. Holen of the Electropower department. He gave lectures in reliability analysis as part of his courses in electropower engineering - mainly based on Markov methods.
At the Department of Mathematical Statistics it was soon realized that the book by Barlow and Proschan was too brief and too theoretical to be suitable as a textbook for the reliability course at NTNU. Marvin Rausand therefore started to write a compendium in reliability. The first version of this compendium was printed in 1979. Professor Høyland and professor Holen joined the project and they decides to write a textbook in Norwegian. This book was called "Pålitelighetsanalyse" and was published by Tapir in 1983 (Holen, A. T., A. Høyland, and M. Rausand, 1983, Tapir, Trondheim). The book was reprinted several times and was used as a textbook in courses in reliability analysis both at NTNU and other Nordic universities until 1994 - when the first edition of the book "System Reliability Theory" was published (This book was based on the Norwegian book, but professor Holen decided not to participate in writing the English book).
The RAMS group can be traced back to the adjunct professorship of Helge Christensen, Department of Machine Design, in the mid 1970s. He had a professorship in tero-technology, but also showed a keen interest in safety and reliability issues. He therefore initiated a course module called "Industrial safety and reliability", which was offered to 4th year Master students. From 1978, this course module was lectured by Marvin Rausand - while he still was an assistant professor at the Department of Mathematical Statistics, NTNU. Marvin Rausand started working for SINTEF Machine Design in January 1980, but continued to lecture the course module.
Professor Helge Christensen died too early and was replaced by Professor Marvin Rausand in a full-time position from January 1990.
Terje Aven was engaged as an adjunct professor (20% position) in risk analysis during a period of five years. In this period, he lectured a Ph.D. course module in quantitative risk analysis.
Per Schjølberg was employed by the Department of Machine Design as an associated professor in maintenance from 1989. He developed and lectured a course module in maintenance management.
The Department of Machine Design was part of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. This faculty was reorganized in 1992/93 and the RAMS group became a group of the Department of Production and Quality Engineering. At that time, the RAMS group consisted of Marvin Rausand, Per Schjølberg, one part-time secretary, and two scientific assistants.
Jørn Vatn was engaged as an adjunct professor in reliability analysis in 2000-2002, and as a full-time professor from 2002.
Mary Ann Lundteigen was employed as a professor in reliability assessment of safety-critical systems in 2010. She was very active, developed new courses, and supervised a range of master students, but decided to leave the RAMS Group in May 2012 - after only two years. She was employed by DNV Risk Management Solutions in Trondheim, but after a while she realized that she missed academia and decided to return to her professorship from 1. January 2014.
Stein Haugen joined the RAMS group as a KGJ professor in technical safety and risk analysis in 2010.
Yiliu Liu joined the RAMS group as an associate professor in reliability engineering in January 2012.
Anne Barros joined the RAMS group in August 2014 as a DNV GL professor in subsea reliability.
The RAMS group has developed in parallel with SINTEF Safety and Reliability (Now SINTEF Safety Research). The three early members of the RAMS group (Rausand, Schjølberg, and Vatn) have all been employed by SINTEF before joining the RAMS group.