Production costs are being reduced by automation, robotics, computer-integrated manufacturing, cost reduction studies and more. These new technologies are expensive to buy, repair, and maintain. Hence, the demand on maintenance is growing and its costs are escalating. This new environment is compelling industrial maintenance organizations to make the transition from fixing broken machines to higher-level business units for securing production capacity. On the academic front, research in the area of maintenance management and engineering is receiving tremendous interest from researchers. Many papers have appeared in the literature dealing with the modeling and solution of maintenance problems using operations research (OR) and management science (MS) techniques. This area represents an opportunity for making significant contributions by the OR and MS communities. Maintenance, Modeling, and Optimization provides in one volume the latest developments in the area of maintenance modeling. Prominent scholars have contributed chapters covering a wide range of topics. We hope that this initial contribution will serve as a useful informative introduction to this field that may permit additional developments and useful directions for more research in this fast-growing area. The book is divided into six parts and contains seventeen chapters. Each chapter has been subject to review by at least two experts in the area of maintenance modeling and optimization. The first chapter provides an introduction to major maintenance modeling areas illustrated with some basic models. Part II contains five chapters dealing with maintenance planning and scheduling. Part III deals with preventive maintenance in six chapters. Part IV focuses on condition-based maintenance and contains two chapters. Part V deals with integrated production and maintenance models and contains two chapters. Part VI addresses issues related to maintenance and new technologies, and also deals with Just-in-Time (JIT) and Maintenance.

As our modern information-age society grows in complexity both in terms of embedded systems and applications, the problems and challenges in reliability become ever more complex. Bringing together many of the leading experts in the field, this volume presents a broad picture of current research on system modeling and optimization in reliability and its applications.The book comprises twenty-three chapters organized into four parts: Reliability Modeling, Software Quality Engineering, Software Reliability, and Maintenance and Inspection Policies. These sections cover a wide range of important topics, including system reliability modeling, optimization, software reliability and quality, maintenance theory and inspection, reliability failure analysis, sampling plans and schemes, software development processes and improvement, stochastic process modeling, statistical distributions and analysis, fault-tolerant performance, software measurements and cost effectiveness, queueing theory and applications, system availability, reliability of repairable systems, testing sampling inspection, software capability maturity model, accelerated life modeling, statistical control, and HALT testing.

Reliability theory and applications become major concerns of engineers and managers engaged in making high quality products and designing highly reliable systems. This book aims to survey new research topics in reliability theory and useful applied techniques in reliability engineering.Our research group in Nagoya, Japan has continued to study reliability theory and applications for more than twenty years, and has presented and published many good papers at international conferences and in journals. This book focuses mainly on how to apply the results of reliability theory to practical models. Theoretical results of coherent, inspection, and damage systems are summarized methodically, using the techniques of stochastic processes. There exist optimization problems in computer and management sciences and engineering. It is shown that such problems as computer, information and network systems are solved by using the techniques of reliability. Furthermore, some useful techniques applied to the analysis of stochastic models in management science and plants are shown.The reader will learn new topics and techniques, and how to apply reliability models to actual ones. The book will serve as an essential guide to a subject of study for graduate students and researchers and as a useful guide for reliability engineers engaged not only in maintenance work but also in management and computer works.

This introductory textbook links theory with practice using real illustrative cases involving products, plants and infrastructures and exposes the student to the evolutionary trends in maintenance. Provides an interdisciplinary approach which links, engineering, science, technology, mathematical modelling, data collection and analysis, economics and management Blends theory with practice illustrated through examples relating to products, plants and infrastructures Focuses on concepts, tools and techniques Identifies the special management requirements of various engineered objects (products, plants, and infrastructures)

Bringing together business and engineering to reliability analysisWith manufactured products exploding in numbers and complexity,reliability studies play an increasingly critical role throughout aproduct's entire life cycle-from design to post-sale support.Reliability: Modeling, Prediction, and Optimization presents aremarkably broad framework for the analysis of the technical andcommercial aspects of product reliability, integrating concepts andmethodologies from such diverse areas as engineering, materialsscience, statistics, probability, operations research, andmanagement. Written in plain language by two highly respectedexperts in the field, this practical work provides engineers,operations managers, and applied statisticians with bothqualitative and quantitative tools for solving a variety ofcomplex, real-world reliability problems. A wealth of examples andcase studies accompanies: * Comprehensive coverage of assessment, prediction, and improvementat each stage of a product's life cycle * Clear explanations of modeling and analysis for hardware rangingfrom a single part to whole systems * Thorough coverage of test design and statistical analysis ofreliability data * A special chapter on software reliability * Coverage of effective management of reliability, product support,testing, pricing, and related topics * Lists of sources for technical information, data, and computerprograms * Hundreds of graphs, charts, and tables, as well as over 500references * PowerPoint slides are available from the Wiley editorialdepartment.

Our daily lives can be maintained by the high-technology systems. Computer systems are typical examples of such systems. We can enjoy our modern lives by using many computer systems. Much more importantly, we have to maintain such systems without failure, but cannot predict when such systems will fail and how to fix such systems without delay. A stochastic process is a set of outcomes of a random experiment indexed by time, and is one of the key tools needed to analyze the future behavior quantitatively. Reliability and maintainability technologies are of great interest and importance to the maintenance of such systems. Many mathematical models have been and will be proposed to describe reliability and maintainability systems by using the stochastic processes. The theme of this book is "Stochastic Models in Reliability and Main tainability. " This book consists of 12 chapters on the theme above from the different viewpoints of stochastic modeling. Chapter 1 is devoted to "Renewal Processes," under which classical renewal theory is surveyed and computa tional methods are described. Chapter 2 discusses "Stochastic Orders," and in it some definitions and concepts on stochastic orders are described and ag ing properties can be characterized by stochastic orders. Chapter 3 is devoted to "Classical Maintenance Models," under which the so-called age, block and other replacement models are surveyed. Chapter 4 discusses "Modeling Plant Maintenance," describing how maintenance practice can be carried out for plant maintenance.

Dependability and cost effectiveness are primarily seen as instruments for conducting international trade in the free market environment. These factors cannot be considered in isolation of each other. This handbook considers all aspects of performability engineering. The book provides a holistic view of the entire life cycle of activities of the product, along with the associated cost of environmental preservation at each stage, while maximizing the performance.