The area of Reliability has become a very important and active area of research. This is clearly evident from the large body of literature that has been developed in the form of books, volumes and research papers since 1988 when the previous Handbook of Statistics on this area was prepared by P.R. Krishnaiah and C.R. Rao. This is the reason we felt that this is indeed the right time to dedicate another volume in the Handbook of Statistics series to highlight some recent advances in the area of Reliability. With this purpose in mind, we solicited articles from leading experts working in the area of Reliability from both academia and industry. This, in our opinion, has resulted in a volume with a nice blend of articles (33 in total) dealing with theoretical, methodological and applied issues in Reliability.

Integrating development processes, policies, and reliability predictions from the beginning of the product development lifecycle to ensure high levels of product performance and safety, this book helps companies overcome the challenges posed by increasingly complex systems in today's competitive marketplace. Examining both research on and practical aspects of product quality and reliability management with an emphasis on applications, the book features contributions written by active researchers and/or experienced practitioners in the field, so as to effectively bridge the gap between theory and practice and address new research challenges in reliability and quality management in practice. Postgraduates, researchers and practitioners in the areas of reliability engineering and management, amongst others, will find the book to offer a state-of-the-art survey of quality and reliability management and practices.

Reliability and Safety of Complex Technical Systems and Processes offers a comprehensive approach to the analysis, identification, evaluation, prediction and optimization of complex technical systems operation, reliability and safety. Its main emphasis is on multistate systems with ageing components, changes to their structure, and their components reliability and safety parameters during the operation processes. Reliability and Safety of Complex Technical Systems and Processes presents integrated models for the reliability, availability and safety of complex non-repairable and repairable multistate technical systems, with reference to their operation processes and their practical applications to real industrial systems. The authors consider variables in different operation states, reliability and safety structures, and the reliability and safety parameters of components, as well as suggesting a cost analysis for complex technical systems. Researchers and industry practitioners will find information on a wide range of complex technical systems in Reliability and Safety of Complex Technical Systems and Processes. It may prove an easy-to-use guide to reliability and safety evaluations of real complex technical systems, both during their operation and at the design stages.

Applying TQM to systems engineering can reduce costs while simultaneously improving product quality. This guide to proactive systems engineering shows how to develop and optimize a practical approach, while highlighting the pitfalls and potentials involved.

Electrical power systems are, in general, amongst the most reliable systems worldwide. These large interconnected systems, however, often operate under stressed conditions because of the increasing demand for electricity and the challenges associated with improving the infrastructure due to both economical and environmental issues. Some of the major challenges facing the electricity industry today include balancing between resource adequacy, reliability, economics, environmental and other public purpose objectives to optimize transmission and distribution resources to meet the growing demand. The capability of a power system depends on network constraints, generated power, line currents, nodal voltage amplitudes, and stability margins. If modern or enhanced facilities are not affordable, a renewed effort in assessing and rationalizing the exploitation of the system capability is highly recommended.

Solutions to these complex issues are offered through the integration of modern information and communication technologies with reliable methodologies for power systems analysis. The goal of this book is to provide a vision for a comprehensive and systematic approach to meet the grid management challenges through new information services.

Detailed and comprehensive, "Waste Management in the Oil Industry" deals with strategies required to manage wastes emanating from oil exploration, development, refining, storage, and distribution in an ecologically friendly manner. Drawing on his extensive experience in the environmental engineering industry and pollution control, Dr. Aloysius A. Aguwa takes an in-depth look at the dilemmas facing the oil industry today.

Dr. Aguwa discusses key strategies needed to effectively control and manage waste associated with the oil and gas industry. These strategies can be grouped into the following categories:

Input substitution Product reformulation Production process redesign/modernization Improved operation and maintenance of production Recovery/recycle Waste treatment Drawings, figures, and tables also help support Dr. Aguwa's research. Those responsible for implementing environmentally sound disposal activities in the oil industry will find "Waste Management in the Oil Industry" an invaluable resource.

Billions of dollars are being spent annually world-wide to develop reliable and good quality products and services. Global competition and other factors are forcing manufacturers and others to produce highly reliable and good quality products and services. This means that reliability and quality principles are now being applied across many diverse sectors of economy and each of these sectors (robotics, health care, power generation, the Internet, textile, food and software) has tailored reliability and quality principles, methods, and procedures to satisfy its specific need.

Reliability and quality professionals working in these areas need to know about each other's work activities because this may help them - directly or indirectly - to perform their tasks more effectively. Applied Reliability and Quality: Fundamentals, Methods and Procedures meets the need for a single volume that considers applied areas of both reliability and quality. Before now, there has not been one book that covers both applied reliability and quality; so to gain knowledge of each other's specialties, these people had to study various books, articles, or reports on each area.

As the first book of its kind, Applied Reliability and Quality: Fundamentals, Methods and Procedures will be useful to design engineers, manufacturing engineers, system engineers, engineering and manufacturing managers, reliability specialists, quality specialists, graduate and senior undergraduate students of engineering, researchers and instructors of reliability and quality, and professionals in areas such as health care, software, power generation, robotics, textile, food, and the Internet.

These are the papers presented at the Fib-RILEM workshop held in Madrid, Spain, in November 2010. The assessment of deterioration and aging of concrete structures, most commonlythrough reinforcement corrosion, is not considered incurrent structural codes or standards. Some guidelines manuals exist, and research has been done, but there is as yet no accepted methodology nor models that could be used by engineers.

This book deals with all aspects related to modelling of corroding structures and provides state-of-the-art information on structural models for corroding structures."

This book is an attempt to provide a uni?ed methodology to derive models for fatigue life. This includes S-N, ?-N and crack propagation models. This is not a conventional book aimed at describing the fatigue fundamentals, but rather a book in which the basic models of the three main fatigue approaches, the stress-based, the strain-based and the fracture mechanics approaches, are contemplated from a novel and integrated point of view. On the other hand, as an alternative to the preferential attention paid to deterministic models based on the physical, phenomenological and empirical description of fatigue, their probabilistic nature is emphasized in this book, in which stochastic fatigue and crack growth models are presented. This book is the result of a long period of close collaborationbetween its two authors who, although of di?erent backgrounds, mathematical and mechanical, both have a strong sense of engineering with respect to the fatigue problem. When the authors of this book ?rst approached the fatigue ?eld in 1982 (twenty six years ago), they found the following scenario: 1. Linear, bilinear or trilinear models were frequently proposed by relevant laboratoriesandacademiccenterstoreproducetheW] ohler?eld. Thiswas the case of well known institutions, which justi?ed these models based on clientrequirementsorpreferences. Thisledtotheinclusionofsuchmodels and methods as, for example, the up-and-down, in standards and o?cial practical directives (ASTM, Euronorm, etc.), which have proved to be unfortunate."

Dr. Jean Huxsoll and a team of distinguished biotechnology industry experts from the U.S. and Europe offer a wealth of practical guidelines to designing, implementing, and managing QA systems to assure that biopharmaceutical products meet standards for safety purity, and potency. Quality Assurance for Biopharmaceuticals covers all important theoretical and practical concerns, including detailed guidelines to meeting GMP compliance; quality assurance of production; quality assurance of analytical methods; advanced documentation, sampling, and validation techniques; comprehensive coverage of regulatory issues in the U.S., Europe, and Japan; and much more.

Focusing on the theory and applications of point processes, Point Processes for Reliability Analysis naturally combines classical results on the basic and advanced properties of point processes with recent theoretical findings of the authors. It also presents numerous examples that illustrate how general results and approaches are applied to stochastic description of repairable systems and systems operating in a random environment modelled by shock processes. The real life objects are operating in a changing, random environment. One of the ways to model an impact of this environment is via the external shocks occurring in accordance with some stochastic point processes. The Poisson (homogeneous and nonhomogeneous) process, the renewal process and their generalizations are considered as models for external shocks affecting an operating system. At the same time these processes model the consecutive failure/repair times of repairable engineering systems. Perfect, minimal and intermediate (imperfect) repairs are discussed in this respect. Covering material previously available only in the journal literature, Point Processes for Reliability Analysis provides a survey of recent developments in this area which will be invaluable to researchers and advanced students in reliability engineering and applied mathematics.

Quality control in pharmaceutical products and medical devices is vital for users as failing to comply with national and international regulations can lead to accidents that could easily be avoided. For this reason, manufacturing a quality medical product will support patient safety. Microbiologists working in both the pharmaceutical and medical device industries face considerable challenges in keeping abreast of the myriad microbiological references available to them and the continuously evolving regulatory requirements. Quality Control Applications in the Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Manufacturing Industry presents the importance of quality control in pharmaceutical products and medical devices, which must have very high-quality standards to not cause problems to the health of patients. It reinforces and updates the knowledge of analytical, instrumental, and biological methods to demonstrate the correct quality control and good manufacturing practice for pharmaceutical products and medical devices. Covering topics such as pharmaceutical nano systems, machine learning, and software validation, this book is an essential resource for managers, engineers, supervisors, pharmacists, chemists, academicians, and researchers.

To be able to compete successfully both at national and international levels, production systems and equipment must perform at levels not even thinkable a decade ago. Requirements for increased product quality, reduced throughput time and enhanced operating effectiveness within a rapidly changing customer demand environment continue to demand a high maintenance performance. In some cases, maintenance is required to increase operational effectiveness and revenues and customer satisfaction while reducing capital, operating and support costs. This may be the largest challenge facing production enterprises these days. For this, maintenance strategy is required to be aligned with the production logistics and also to keep updated with the current best practices. Maintenance has become a multidisciplinary activity and one may come across situations in which maintenance is the responsibility of people whose training is not engineering. This handbook aims to assist at different levels of understanding whether the manager is an engineer, a production manager, an experienced maintenance practitioner or a beginner. Topics selected to be included in this handbook cover a wide range of issues in the area of maintenance management and engineering to cater for all those interested in maintenance whether practitioners or researchers. This handbook is divided into 6 parts and contains 26 chapters covering a wide range of topics related to maintenance management and engineering.

The underlying principles invented and developed by Dr. Genichi Taguchi (1924 - 2012), for the design of experiments or simulation calculations in multi-parameter systems, are today known as Taguchi Method. Due to the great success, it was extended to many other areas. The book explains the basics of this method in as much detail as necessary and as simply and graphically as possible. The author shows how broad the current application spectrum is and for which different tasks it can be used. The application examples range from optimizing a fermentation process in biotechnology to minimizing costs in mechanical production and maintaining and improving competitiveness in industrial production. The processes described are ideally suited to finding reliable and precise solutions for a wide variety of problems relatively quickly. A real competitive advantage not only in research but also for companies that want to remain competitive in international business competition. Contents Part 1: Analysis of Variables Part 2: Pattern Recognition and Diagnosis Part 3: Prognosis Target groups Students, scientists, engineers or those responsible for development and products learn to use the Taguchi Method with this book - even without any previous mathematical-statistical knowledge. The author Herbert Ruefer studied physics and obtained his doctorate at the Technical University Karlsruhe, Germany. After a research stay at IBM, San Jose, California, he taught at the San Marcos National University in Lima, Peru. He then took on research, development, and training tasks in the chemical industry in Germany. During this time, the first personal contacts with Dr. Genichi Taguchi and Dr. Yuin Wu took place. After his active professional life, he dedicated himself to special optical methods for astronomical observations. He also lectures at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos which awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2017.

The problem of controlling the output of a system so as to achieve asymptotic tracking of prescribed trajectories and/or asymptotic re jection of undesired disturbances is a central problem in control the ory. A classical setup in which the problem was posed and success fully addressed - in the context of linear, time-invariant and finite dimensional systems - is the one in which the exogenous inputs, namely commands and disturbances, may range over the set of all possible trajectories ofa given autonomous linear system, commonly known as the exogeneous system or, more the exosystem. The case when the exogeneous system is a harmonic oscillator is, of course, classical. Even in this special case, the difference between state and error measurement feedback in the problem ofoutput reg ulation is profound. To know the initial condition of the exosystem is to know the amplitude and phase of the corresponding sinusoid. On the other hand, to solve the output regulation problem in this case with only error measurement feedback is to track, or attenu ate, a sinusoid ofknown frequency but with unknown amplitude and phase. This is in sharp contrast with alternative approaches, such as exact output tracking, where in lieu of the assumption that a signal is within a class of signals generated by an exogenous system, one instead assumes complete knowledge of the past, present and future time history of the trajectory to be tracked."

The safe management of the complex distributed systems and critical infrastructures which constitute the backbone of modern industry and society entails identifying and quantifying their vulnerabilities to design adequate protection, mitigation, and emergency action against failure. In practice, there is no fail-safe solution to such problems and various frameworks are being proposed to effectively integrate different methods of complex systems analysis in a problem-driven approach to their solution. Vulnerable Systems reflects the current state of knowledge on the procedures which are being put forward for the risk and vulnerability analysis of critical infrastructures. Classical methods of reliability and risk analysis, as well as new paradigms based on network and systems theory, including simulation, are considered in a dynamic and holistic way. Readers of Vulnerable Systems will benefit from its structured presentation of the current knowledge base on this subject. It will enable graduate students, researchers and safety and risk analysts to understand the methods suitable for different phases of analysis and to identify their criticalities in application.

Control systems design methodologies have long suffered the traditional and myopic dichotomy between time and frequency domain approaches, each of them being specialized to cope with only scarcely overlapping performance requirements. This book is aimed at bridging the two approaches by presenting design methodologies based on the minimization of a norm (H2/H() of a suitable transfer function. A distinctive feature of these techniques is the fact that they do not create only one solution to the design problem, instead they provide a whole set of admissible solutions which satisfy a constraint on the maximum deterioration of the performance index.
A systematic book on this topic is long overdue. Self-contained and practical in its approach, Control Theory and Design enables the reader to use the relevant techniques in various real-life applications. The text covers the basic facts of robustcontrol and theory as well as more recent achievements, such as robust stability and robust performance in presence of parameter uncertainties. It features a new perspective on classical LQC results and further sections on robust synthesis, nonclassicaloptimization problems, and analysis and synthesis of uncertain systems.
Control Theory and Design is essential reading for graduates and those entering the research field. The required mathematical background is provided so that the book is also suitable for undergraduate students with some knowledge of basic systemsand control.
Key Features
* Provides a self-contained manual for learning control systems and design
* Contains a clear and concise presentation of the technical background needed
* Includes a new perspective of classical LQG results
* Contains updated results and novel contributions to nonstandard RH2/RH infinity symbol problems
* Covers all the theory from the basic to the more advanced issues

There are two main fields of application of pulse-modulated sys tems, communications and control. Communication is not a subject of our concern in this book. Controlling by a pulse-modulated feed attracted our efforts. The peculiarity of this book is that all back the sampled-data systems are considered in continuous time, so no discrete time schemes are presented. And finally, we pay a little at tention to pulse-amplitude modulation which was treated in a vast number of publications. The primary fields of our interest are pulse width, pulse-frequency, and pulse-phase modulated control systems. The study of such systems meets with substantial difficulties. An engineer, who embarks on theoretical investigations of a pulse-mo dulated control, is often embarrassed by the sophisticated mathe matical tools he needs to know. When a mathematician, who looks for practical applications of his mathematical machinery, meets with these systems, he faces a lot of of complicated technical schemes and terms. Probably this is the reason why publications on pulse modu lation are seldom in scientific journals. As for books on this subject (save on amplitude modulation), the significant part of them is in Russian and hardly available for a non-Russian reader."