Modern society depends heavily upon a host of systems of varying complexity to perform the services required. The importance of reliability assumes new dimensions, primarily because of the higher cost of these highly complex machines required by mankind and the implication of their failure. This is why all industrial organizations wish to equip their scientists, engineers, managers and administrators with a knowledge of reliability concepts and applications. Based on the author's 20 years experience as reliability educator, researcher and consultant, Reliability Engineering introduces the reader systematically to reliability evaluation, prediction, allocation and optimization. It also covers further topics, such as maintainability and availability, software reliability, economics of reliability, reliability management, reliability testing, etc. A reliability study of some typical systems has been included to introduce the reader to the practical aspects. The book is intended for graduate students of engineering schools and also professional engineers, managers and reliability administrators as it has a wide coverage of reliability concepts.

Managing safety in a professional environment requires constant negotiation with other competitive dimensions of risk management (finances, market and political drivers, manpower and social crisis). This is obvious, although generally not said in safety manuals. The book provides a unique vision of how to best find these compromises, starting with lessons learnt from natural risk management by individuals, then applying them to the craftsman industry, complex industrial systems (civil aviation, nuclear energy) and public services (like transportation and medicine). It offers a unique, illustrated, easy to read and scientifically based set of original concepts and pragmatic methods to revisit safety management and adopt a successful system vision. As such, and with illustrations coming from many various fields (aviation, fishing, nuclear, oil, medicine), it potentially covers a broad readership.

Looks at quality management in a new way; Offers a very different mathematical tool set than traditionally employed for quality control problems; Yao is a leading researcher in the area of stochastic modeling and the author of a previous Springer book

Margot P. C. Weijnen, Zofia Lukszo and Geert Deconinck Abstract The infrastructures for electric power and information and telecommunication services are critical enablers for all economic activity. Both of these infrastructure systems evolved over time as networks-of-networks in an institutionally fr- mented landscape. In understanding and steering the emergent behaviour of these infrastructure systems both their physical network complexity and their social n- work complexity pose a formidable challenge. On top of the socio-technical c- plexity of the electricity infrastructure and the information and telecommunication infrastructure as such, the two infrastructure systems show unprecedented mutual interdependency. Unravelling this multi-level interdependency and identifying strategies to curb the new risks and vulnerabilities it implies for the reliability of electric power services is the goal of this book. It clearly shows that technical so- tions alone will not suffice to ensure the future reliability and security of electricity infrastructure operations. Keywords Cybersecurity * infrastructure vulnerability * infrastructure depend- cies * power systems 1. 1 Infrastructures Are Critical Infrastructures are the backbone of the economy and society. Especially the network bound infrastructures operated by public utilities and network industries provide essential services that are enabling for almost every economic and social activity. M. P. C. Weijnen (*) and Z. Lukszo Technology Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, P. O. Box 5015, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands e-mail: M. P. C. Weijnen@tudelft. nl; Z. Lukszo@tudelft. nl G. Deconinck K. U.

In recent years, rapid changes and improvements have been witnessed in the field of transformer condition monitoring and assessment, especially with the advances in computational intelligence techniques. Condition Monitoring and Assessment of Power Transformers Using Computational Intelligence applies a broad range of computational intelligence techniques to deal with practical transformer operation problems. The approaches introduced are presented in a concise and flowing manner, tackling complex transformer modelling problems and uncertainties occurring in transformer fault diagnosis. Condition Monitoring and Assessment of Power Transformers Using Computational Intelligence covers both the fundamental theories and the most up-to-date research in this rapidly changing field. Many examples have been included that use real-world measurements and realistic operating scenarios of power transformers to fully illustrate the use of computational intelligence techniques for a variety of transformer modelling and fault diagnosis problems. Condition Monitoring and Assessment of Power Transformers Using Computational Intelligence is a useful book for professional engineers and postgraduate students. It also provides a firm foundation for advanced undergraduate students in power engineering.

Simulation Methods for Reliability and Availability of Complex Systems discusses the use of computer simulation-based techniques and algorithms to determine reliability and availability (R and A) levels in complex systems. The book: shares theoretical or applied models and decision support systems that make use of simulation to estimate and to improve system R and A levels, forecasts emerging technologies and trends in the use of computer simulation for R and A and proposes hybrid approaches to the development of efficient methodologies designed to solve R and A-related problems in real-life systems. Dealing with practical issues, Simulation Methods for Reliability and Availability of Complex Systems is designed to support managers and system engineers in the improvement of R and A, as well as providing a thorough exploration of the techniques and algorithms available for researchers, and for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Risk has become one of the main topics in fields as diverse as engineering, medicine and economics, and it is also studied by social scientists, psychologists and legal scholars. This Springer Essentials version offers an overview of the in-depth handbook and highlights some of the main points covered in the Handbook of Risk Theory. The topic of risk also leads to more fundamental questions such as: What is risk? What can decision theory contribute to the analysis of risk? What does the human perception of risk mean for society? How should we judge whether a risk is morally acceptable or not? Over the last couple of decades questions like these have attracted interest from philosophers and other scholars into risk theory. This brief offers the essentials of the handbook provides for an overview into key topics in a major new field of research and addresses a wide range of topics, ranging from decision theory, risk perception to ethics and social implications of risk. It aims to promote communication and information among all those who are interested in theoretical issues concerning risk and uncertainty. The Essentials of Risk Theory brings together internationally leading philosophers and scholars from other disciplines who work on risk theory. The contributions are accessibly written and highly relevant to issues that are studied by risk scholars. The Essentials of Risk Theory will be a helpful starting point for all risk scholars who are interested in broadening and deepening their current perspectives.

We think we have scientific knowledge when we know the cause. (Aristotle, Posterior Analytics Book II, Part 11) About 12 years ago, when I was a graduate student, many people were concerned about my Ph. D. topic - investigating the effect of the complexity of procedu- lized tasks on the performance of human operators working in nuclear power plants. Although they agreed with the fact that procedures (especially emergency operating procedures) play a crucial role in securing the safety of nuclear power plants, it was amazing that most of them pointed out a very similar issue: "I cannot understand why operating personnel see any difficulty (or complexity) in condu- ing procedures, because all that they have to do is to follow a simple IF-THEN- ELSE rule as written. " Actually, this issue is closely related to one of the main questions I was recently asked, such as "Don't you think your work is too acad- ic to apply to actual procedures?" or "I guess we don't need to consider the c- plexity of procedures, because we can develop a good procedure using many pr- tical procedure writers' guidelines. Then what is the real contribution of your work?" I absolutely agree with the latter comment. Yes, we can develop a good pro- dure with the support of many practical and excellent guidelines.

Towards Estimating Entrainment Fraction for Dust Layers closely examines the factors that can affect the assessment of a dust hazard, and outlines a new strawman method designed to help practitioners estimate the fraction of the dust accumulations that can become airborne. This book also aims to provide aid in the removal of aerodynamic disturbances of dust particles or agglomerates from layers or piles of cohesive and non-cohesive dusts. Towards Estimating Entrainment Fraction for Dust Layers is designed for practitioners as a reference guide for improving dust hazard assessment. Researchers working in a related field will also find the book valuable.

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 31 The continual effort to improve performance in business processes attracts 4 increasing attention in research and industry alike. The impact of design 5 development performance on the overall business positions this area as an 6 important performance improvement opportunity. However, design devel- 7 opment is characterised by novelty, uniqueness and non-repeatability, which 8 provides particular challenges in de?ning, measuring and managing its 9 performance to achieve improvement. 2011 This book explores the support provided by both general research in busi- 1 ness process performance and design research for supporting performance 2 improvement in design development. The nature of design development in industrial practice is further revealed, and requirements for its modelling and 3 analysis to achieve improvement are highlighted. 4 A methodology for the modelling and analysis of performance in design 5 development that encapsulates a formalism of performance and an approach 6 for its analysis is established. The formalism is composed of three models, 7 which capture the nature of design development performance and support its 8 2 measurement and management. The E model formalises and relates the key 9 3011 elements of performance, i. e. , ef?ciency and effectiveness. The Design Activity 1 Management (DAM) model distinguishes design and design management 2 activities in terms of the knowledge processed, while the Performance 3 Measurement and Management (PMM) model describes how these activities 4 relate within a process of measuring and managing performance.

In 1980, I received a grant from Aoyama-gakuin university to come to the United States to assist American Industry improve the quality of their products. In a small way this was to repay the help the US had given Japan after the war. In the summer of 1980, I visited the AT&T Bell Laboratories Quality Assurance Center, the organization that founded modern quality control. The result of my first summer at AT&T was an experiment with an orthogonal array design of size 18 (OA18) for optimization of an LSI fabrication process. As a measure of quality, the quantity "signal-ta-noise" ratio was to be optimized. Since then, this experi mental approach has been named "robust design" and has attracted the attention of both engineers and statisticians. My colleagues at Bell Laboratories have written several expository articles and a few theoretical papers on robust design from the viewpoint of statistics. Because so many people have asked for copies of these papers, it has been decided to publish them in a book form. This anthology is the result of these efforts. Despite the fact that quality engineering borrows some technical words from traditional design of experiments, the goals of quality engineering are different from those of statistics. For example, suppose there are two vendors. One vendor supplies products whose quality characteristic has a normal distribution with the mean on target (the desired value) and a certain standard deviation.

The proceedings contain papers accepted for the 17th ISPE International Conference on Concurrent Engineering, which was held in Cracow, Poland, September 6-10, 2010. Concurrent Engineering (CE) has a history of over twenty years. At first, primary focus was on bringing downstream information as much upstream as possible, by introducing parallel processing of processes, in order to prevent errors at the later stage which would sometimes cause irrevocable damage and to reduce time to market. During the period of more than twenty years, numerous new concepts, methodologies and tools have been developed. During this period the background for engineering/manufacturing has changed extensively. Now, industry has to work with global markets. The globalization brought forth a new network of experts and companies across many different domains and fields in distributed environments. These collaborations integrated with very high level of profesionalism and specialisation, provided the basis for innovations in design and manufacturing and succeeded in creating new products on a global market.

Engineering Decisions for Life Quality: How Safe is Safe Enough? provides a foundation and a theoretical basis for managing risk to an acceptable level under the real-world constraint of limited resources. The focus is not on risks as such, but on what can be done to maximize the positive outcomes of risk in terms of improvements to the quality of life. The principal focus of Engineering Decisions for Life Quality: How Safe is Safe Enough? is on the development of guidance for establishing rational standards of practice. Standards should meet the requirement of utilizing resources to achieve the maximum net overall benefit to society within society's capacity to commit such resources. The ideas discussed within this book will be of interest to engineers; advanced undergraduate and graduate students; public health officials; and risk specialists.

In many engineering design and optimisation problems, the presence of uncertainty in the data is a central and critical issue. Different fields of engineering use different ways to describe this uncertainty and adopt a variety of techniques to devise designs that are at least partly insensitive or robust to uncertainty.

Probabilistic and Randomized Methods for Design under Uncertainty examines uncertain systems in control engineering and general decision or optimisation problems for which data is not known exactly. Gathering contributions from the world s leading researchers in optimisation and robust control; this book highlights the interactions between these two fields, and focuses on new randomised and probabilistic techniques for solving design problems in the presence of uncertainty:

• Part I describes general theory and solution methodologies for probability-constrained and stochastic optimization problems, including chance-constrained optimisation, stochastic optimization and risk measures;
• Part II focuses on numerical methods for solving randomly perturbed convex programs and semi-infinite optimisation problems by probabilistic techniques such as constraint sampling and scenario-based optimisation;
• Part III details the theory and applications of randomised techniques to the analysis and design of robust control systems.

Probabilistic and Randomized Methods for Design under Uncertainty will be of interest to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in control engineering and operations research as well as professionals working in operations reasearch who are interested in decision-making, optimisation and stochastic modelling."

Topics in Toxicology Toxicology is a science that stands at the intersection of several interests and disciplines. These intersecting forces are by no means all scientific since some are legal and some are commercial. All have valid things to say about the conduct and interpretation of toxicity experiments. The practising toxicologist must bear all these sometimes conflicting forces in mind as he carries out his duties. This is especially true, of course, of the toxicologist in industry. Toxicology is also a field in which contract research particularly flourishes and a number of major contract research companies have established over the years a reputation for contributing usefully to the practice of this skill. These contract research organisations are particu larly favoured to develop an appreciation of the problems of the in dustrial toxicologist, since it is very common for such a company to service the toxicological needs of companies in several sectors of industry producing new chemical compounds, and the contract research company, therefore, is aware of a wider diversiy of problems than probably affects a single toxicologist in one industry."

Ernst G. Frankel This book has its origin in lecture notes developed over several years for use in a course in Systems Reliability f r engineers concerned with the design of physical systems such as civil structures, power plants, and transport systems of all types. Increasing public concern with the reliability of systems for reasons of human safety, environmental protection, and acceptable investment risk limitations has resulted in an increasing interest by engineers in the formal application of reliability theory to engineering design. At the same time there is a demand for more effective approaches to the design of procedures for the operation and use of man made systems, more meaningful assessment of the risks introduced, and use such a system poses both when operating as designed and when operating at below design performance. The purpose of the book is to provide a sound, yet practical, introduction to reliability analysis and risk assessment which can be used by professionals in engineering, planning, management, and economics to improve the design, operation, and risk assessment of systems of interest. The text should be useful for students in many disciplines and is designed for fourth-year undergraduates or first-year graduate students. I would like to acknowledge the help of many of my graduate students who contributed to the development of this book by offering comments and criticism. Similarly, I would like to thank Mrs. Sheila McNary who typed untold drafts of the manuscript, and Mr."

This application-oriented professional book explains why components fail, addressing the needs of engineers who apply reliability principles in design, manufacture, testing and field service. A detailed index, a glossary, acronym lists, reliability dictionaries and a rich specific bibliography complete the book.

This book addresses the various risks associated with the transport of dangerous goods within a territory. The emphasis of the contributions is on methods and tools to reduce the vulnerability of both the environment and human society to accidents or malicious acts involving such transport. With topics ranging from game theory to governance principles, the authors together cover technical, legal, financial, and logistic aspects of this problem. The intended audience includes responsible persons in territorial organizations, managers of transport infrastructures, as well as students, teachers and researchers wishing to deepen their knowledge in this area.

For the first time four crucial aspects of gastrointestinal endoscopy are combined in a single text. Drugs for sedation and monitoring of the patient are addressed with particular reference to safety issues and comfort and acceptability for the patient. Resource management and health economic techniques are applied to endoscopy to determine quality and outcome. Problems of negligence and informed consent form the basis of a medico-legal examination of endoscopic practices.

This book presents thirty-one extensive and carefully edited chapters providing an up-to-date survey of new models and methods for reliability analysis and applications in science, engineering, and technology. The chapters contain broad coverage of the latest developments and innovative techniques in a wide range of theoretical and numerical issues in the field of statistical and probabilistic methods in reliability.

Modern product development means problem solving by teams in complex working environments. Thereby, the design process is influenced by factors from various fields, the task, the individual, the team, and the organisational context. This complex network of influences turns product development into a challenge with requirements for the designers aside from technical problems. This book contains the proceedings of the international symposium Designers - The Key to Successful Product Development held in Darmstadt, Germany, December 1997. During this meeting exponents from different leading research groups in engineering design came together to present and discuss their results. Within this volume different aims, issues and methods of design research are addressed in 23 contributions by different research groups. Structured in six sections according to the main fields of influence, it provides a survey of the state of scientifically-based knowledge and the trends of engineering design research on the influences leading to successful product development.

Optimization in Quality Control presents a broad survey of the state of the art in optimization in quality, and focuses on industrial and national competitiveness. Each chapter has been carefully developed and refereed anonymously by experts in the area of optimization in quality control. Some of the topics covered in this volume include: * fundamentals of optimization techniques * contemporary approaches to optimization models in process control * economic design of control charts * determining optimal target values in multiple criteria economic selection models * examining quality improvement schemes by trading off between expected warranty servicing costs and increasing manufacturing costs * designing optimal inspection plans. This book will serve as an important reference source for academics, professionals and researchers.

The theory of stochastic processes, for science and engineering, can be considered as an extension of probability theory allowing modeling of the evolution of systems over time. The modern theory of Markov processes has its origins in the studies of A.A. Markov (1856-1922) on sequences of experiments connected in a chain and in the attempts to describe mathematically the physical phenomenon Brownian motion. The theory of stochastic processes entered in a period of intensive development when the idea of Markov property was brought in. This book is a modern overall view of semi-Markov processes and its applications in reliability. It is accessible to readers with a first course in Probability theory (including the basic notions of Markov chain). The text contains many examples which aid in the understanding of the theoretical notions and shows how to apply them to concrete physical situations including algorithmic simulations. Many examples of the concrete applications in reliability are given.Features: * Processes associated to semi-Markov kernel for general and discrete state spaces * Asymptotic theory of processes and of additive functionals * Statistical estimation of semi-Markov kernel and of reliability function * Monte Carlo simulation * Applications in reliability and maintenance The book is a valuable resource for understanding the latest developments in Semi-Markov Processes and reliability. Practitioners, researchers and professionals in applied mathematics, control and engineering who work in areas of reliability, lifetime data analysis, statistics, probability, and engineering will find this book an up-to-date overview of the field.

The series Advances in Industrial Control aims to report and encourage technology transfer in control engineering. The rapid development of control technology impacts all areas of the control discipline. New theory, new controllers, actuators, sensors, new industrial processes, computer methods, new applications, new philosophies ... , new challenges. Much of this development work resides in industrial reports, feasibility study papers and the reports of advanced collaborative projects. The series offers an opportunity for researchers to present an extended exposition of such new work in all aspects of industrial control for wider and rapid dissemination. The steel industry world-wide is highly competitive and there is significant research in progress to ensure competitive success prevails in the various companies. From an engineering viewpoint, this means the use of increasingly sophisticated techniques and state-of-the-art theory to optimise process throughput and deliver ever more exacting dimensional and material property specifications. Dr. Bjoem Sohlberg's monograph demonstrates this interplay between fundamental control engineering science and the demands of a particular applications project in the steel strip production business. It is an excellent piece of work which clearly shows how these industrial engineering challenges can be formulated and solved.