Thompson (mechanical engineering, UMIST, UK and researcher and author in the field) addresses maintainability and reliability issues in engineering systems and products from a design perspective. Chapters covering general design issues; basic principles of maintainability and reliability; design review; equipment and system evaluation; failure mode analysis; specifications, contracts, and management; concept design; equipment design principles for maintainability and reliability; design for reliability; design to reduce ongoing maintenance costs; and the feedback of information to design. Suitable both as a reference text for particular design methods and as a broader examination of how to achieve maintainability and reliability through design. Distributed by ASME. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

How to design for optimum maintenance capabilities and minimize the repair time Design for Maintainability offers engineers a wide range of tools and techniques for incorporating maintainability into the design process for complex systems. With contributions from noted experts on the topic, the book explains how to design for optimum maintenance capabilities while simultaneously minimizing the time to repair equipment. The book contains a wealth of examples and the most up-to-date maintainability design practices that have proven to result in better system readiness, shorter downtimes, and substantial cost savings over the entire system life cycle, thereby, decreasing the Total Cost of Ownership. Design for Maintainability offers a wealth of design practices not covered in typical engineering books, thus allowing readers to think outside the box when developing maintainability design requirements. The books principles and practices can help engineers to dramatically improve their ability to compete in global markets and gain widespread customer satisfaction. This important book: Offers a complete overview of maintainability engineering as a system engineering discipline Includes contributions from authors who are recognized leaders in the field Contains real-life design examples, both good and bad, from various industries Presents realistic illustrations of good maintainability design principles Provides discussion of the interrelationships between maintainability with other related disciplines Explores trending topics in technologies Written for design and logistics engineers and managers, Design for Maintainability is a comprehensive resource containing the most reliable and innovative techniques for improving maintainability when designing a system or product.

This unique and innovative book explains how to improve your maintenance and reliability performance at the plant level by changing the organizations culture. It is specifically intended for middle managers in the manufacturing and process industries. This book demystifies the concept of organizational culture and links it with the eight elements of change: leadership, work process, structure, group learning, technology, communication, interrelationships, and rewards. If you want to break the cycle of failed improvement programs and instead use cultural change to help make significant and lasting improvements in plant performance, this book will show you how. Features Explains in-depth the eight elements of change and how they relate to cultural change. Discusses cultural change with a reliability focus.Includes a PowerPoint presentation with audio on the enclosed CD-ROM, together with a web survey model, the Web of Organizational Change.

Drawing of real-world issues and with supporting data from industry, this book overviews the technique and equipment available to engineers and scientists to identify the solutions of the physical essence of engineering problems in simulation, accelerated testing, prediction, quality improvement, and risk during the design, manufacturing, and maintenance stages. For this goal the book integrates Quality Improvement and Accelerated Reliability/ Durability/ Maintainability/Test Engineering concepts. Accelerated Quality and Reliability Solutions includes new and unpublished aspects in quality: - complex analysis of factors that influence product quality, and other quality development and improvement problems during design and manufacturing ; in simulation: - the strategy for development of accurate physical simulation of field input influences on the actual product – a system of control for physical simulation of the random input influences – a methodology for selecting a representative input region for accurate simulation of the field conditions; in testing: - useful accelerated reliability testing (UART) – accelerated multiple environmental testing technology – trends in development of UART technology; in studying climate and reliability; in prediction: - accurate prediction (AP) of reliability, durability, and maintainability - criteria of AP - development of techniques, etc.. The book includes new and effective aspects integration of quality, reliability, and maintainability. Other key features: - Includes aspects of quality integrated with reliability which can help to solve earlier inaccessible problems during design, manufacturing, and usage - Develops a new approach to improving the engineering culture for solving quality and reliability problems. - Enables the accurate prediction of quality, reliability, durability, and maintainability - Proposes strategies for accelerated quality, reliability, durability, and maintainability improvement and development - Combines new techniques with equipment for accurate physical simulation of field situation (mechanical, electrical, multi-environmental, and other influences, as well as human and other factors) for development accelerated testing (including reliability testing) and research - Overviews the latest techniques in physical simulation; accelerated testing; prediction of reliability, durability, and maintainability; quality development and improvement; safety aspects of risk assessment, especially for transportation - Supported by real life examples and industry data - Deals with the latest techniques in physical simulation, accelerated testing, prediction of reliability, durability, maintainability, quality development and safety aspects of risk assessment - Provides step-by-step guidance on the accurate prediction of quality factors, the physical simulation of field situations and of accelerated reliability testing - Dramatically reduces recalls by solving product improvement problems through the integration of quality development with reliability

A high percentage of defense systems fail to meet their reliability requirements. This is a serious problem for the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), as well as the nation. Those systems are not only less likely to successfully carry out their intended missions, but they also could endanger the lives of the operators. Furthermore, reliability failures discovered after deployment can result in costly and strategic delays and the need for expensive redesign, which often limits the tactical situations in which the system can be used. Finally, systems that fail to meet their reliability requirements are much more likely to need additional scheduled and unscheduled maintenance and to need more spare parts and possibly replacement systems, all of which can substantially increase the life-cycle costs of a system. Beginning in 2008, DOD undertook a concerted effort to raise the priority of reliability through greater use of design for reliability techniques, reliability growth testing, and formal reliability growth modeling, by both the contractors and DOD units. To this end, handbooks, guidances, and formal memoranda were revised or newly issued to reduce the frequency of reliability deficiencies for defense systems in operational testing and the effects of those deficiencies. "Reliability Growth" evaluates these recent changes and, more generally, assesses how current DOD principles and practices could be modified to increase the likelihood that defense systems will satisfy their reliability requirements. This report examines changes to the reliability requirements for proposed systems; defines modern design and testing for reliability; discusses the contractor's role in reliability testing; and summarizes the current state of formal reliability growth modeling. The recommendations of "Reliability Growth" will improve the reliability of defense systems and protect the health of the valuable personnel who operate them.

A unique, design-based approach to reliability engineering Design for Reliability provides engineers and managers with a range of tools and techniques for incorporating reliability into the design process for complex systems. It clearly explains how to design for zero failure of critical system functions, leading to enormous savings in product life-cycle costs and a dramatic improvement in the ability to compete in global markets. Readers will find a wealth of design practices not covered in typical engineering books, allowing them to think outside the box when developing reliability requirements. They will learn to address high failure rates associated with systems that are not properly designed for reliability, avoiding expensive and time-consuming engineering changes, such as excessive testing, repairs, maintenance, inspection, and logistics. Special features of this book include: A unified approach that integrates ideas from computer science and reliability engineering Techniques applicable to reliability as well as safety, maintainability, system integration, and logistic engineering Chapters on design for extreme environments, developing reliable software, design for trustworthiness, and HALT influence on design Design for Reliability is a must-have guide for engineers and managers in R&D, product development, reliability engineering, product safety, and quality assurance, as well as anyone who needs to deliver high product performance at a lower cost while minimizing system failure.

This unique publication addresses the role of reliability, maintainability, and supportability in the life-cycle of a product, in the context of product effectiveness and worth. It emphasizes all aspects of producing an effective electrical or mechanical system. This is the only handbook available on this subject and the only book that is this comprehensive and informative. The Product Reliability, Maintainability, and Supportability Handbook examines the logistics, cost, and the physics of failure-topics never before found in a single volume on reliability. It describes the factors that affect product effectiveness and worth: performance, reliability, design effectiveness and margin for error, availability, affordability, use effectiveness, and logistic effectiveness. The handbook contains 13 in-depth chapters, opening with an introduction on product effectiveness and worth and concluding with reliability and maintainability data that can be combined with performance data to assess overall effectiveness of the product. The pages are filled with valuable information that can be easily and quickly put to practical use. Basic principles of the mathematical theory of probability and necessary background are provided. Concepts and basic theory of reliability in terms of probability and statistical inference are also given. Techniques for deriving probabilistic models from observational data as well as reliability models and associated validation techniques are detailed. Software and software reliability, quality, and safety are all covered, including the development life-cycle process and mechanisms by which software errors are introduced. The book presents design guidelines and techniques and the requirements for materials, manufacturing, and assembly. Learn how to analyze the reliability of redundant and fault-tolerant products. Use the methods for modeling and analyzing failures of repairable products that normally exhibit wearout characteristics. The Product Reliability, Maintainability, and Supportability Handbook also provides reliability improvement techniques to improve the competitiveness of existing products. The book includes helpful summaries and numerous problem sections to reinforce and test learned information. This reference source is the guide that professionals and technical managers should turn to when they need a comprehensive and detailed overview of everything that goes into producing systems and products that meet customer needs in an effective and timely manner.

Reliability is one of the most important attributes for the products and processes of any company or organization. This important work provides a powerful framework of domain-independent reliability improvement and risk reducing methods which can greatly lower risk in any area of human activity. It reviews existing methods for risk reduction that can be classified as domain-independent and introduces the following new domain-independent reliability improvement and risk reduction methods: Separation Stochastic separation Introducing deliberate weaknesses Segmentation Self-reinforcement Inversion Reducing the rate of accumulation of damage Permutation Substitution Limiting the space and time exposure Comparative reliability models The domain-independent methods for reliability improvement and risk reduction do not depend on the availability of past failure data, domain-specific expertise or knowledge of the failure mechanisms underlying the failure modes. Through numerous examples and case studies, this invaluable guide shows that many of the new domain-independent methods improve reliability at no extra cost or at a low cost. Using the proven methods in this book, any company and organisation can greatly enhance the reliability of its products and operations.

The design and manufacture of reliable products is a major challenge for engineers and managers. This book arms technical managers and engineers with the tools to compete effectively through the design and production of reliable technology products.

Reliability, Maintainability and Risk: Practical Methods for Engineers, Eighth Edition, discusses tools and techniques for reliable and safe engineering, and for optimizing maintenance strategies. It emphasizes the importance of using reliability techniques to identify and eliminate potential failures early in the design cycle. The focus is on techniques known as RAMS (reliability, availability, maintainability, and safety-integrity). The book is organized into five parts. Part 1 on reliability parameters and costs traces the history of reliability and safety technology and presents a cost-effective approach to quality, reliability, and safety. Part 2 deals with the interpretation of failure rates, while Part 3 focuses on the prediction of reliability and risk. Part 4 discusses design and assurance techniques; review and testing techniques; reliability growth modeling; field data collection and feedback; predicting and demonstrating repair times; quantified reliability maintenance; and systematic failures. Part 5 deals with legal, management and safety issues, such as project management, product liability, and safety legislation. - 8th edition of this core reference for engineers who deal with the design or operation of any safety critical systems, processes or operations - Answers the question: how can a defect that costs less than $1000 dollars to identify at the process design stage be prevented from escalating to a $100,000 field defect, or a $1m+ catastrophe - Revised throughout, with new examples, and standards, including must have material on the new edition of global functional safety standard IEC 61508, which launches in 2010