An effective reliability programme is an essential component of every product's design, testing and efficient production. From the failure analysis of a microelectronic device to software fault tolerance and from the accelerated life testing of mechanical components to hardware verification, a common underlying philosophy of reliability applies. Defining both fundamental and applied work across the entire systems reliability arena, this state-of-the-art reference presents methodologies for quality, maintainability and dependability. Featuring: Contributions from 60 leading reliability experts in academia and industry giving comprehensive and authoritative coverage. A distinguished international Editorial Board ensuring clarity and precision throughout. Extensive references to the theoretical foundations, recent research and future directions described in each chapter. Comprehensive subject index providing maximum utility to the reader. Applications and examples across all branches of engineering including IT, power, automotive and aerospace sectors. The handbook's cross-disciplinary scope will ensure that it serves as an indispensable tool for researchers in industrial, electrical, electronics, computer, civil, mechanical and systems engineering. It will also aid professional engineers to find creative reliability solutions and management to evaluate systems reliability and to improve processes. For student research projects it will be the ideal starting point whether addressing basic questions in communications and electronics or learning advanced applications in micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), manufacturing and high-assurance engineering systems.

These three volumes comprise the papers presented at the ESREL '97 International Conference on Safety and Reliability held in Lisbon, Portugal, 17-20 June 1997. The purpose of the annual ESREL conferences is to provide a forum for the presentation of technical and scientific papers covering both methods and applications of safety and reliability to a wide range of industrial sectors and technical disciplines and, in so doing, to enhance cross-fertilization between them.A broad view is taken of safety and reliability which includes probabilistically-based methods, or, more generally, methods that deal with the quantification of the uncertainty in the knowledge of the real world and with decision-making under this uncertainty.The areas covered include: design and product liability; availability, reliability and maintainability; assessment and management of risks to technical systems; health and the environment; and mathematical methods of reliability and statistical analysis of data.The organization of the book closely follows the sessions of the conference with each of the three volumes containing papers from two parallel sessions, comprising a total of 270 papers by authors from 35 countries.

Software Reliability Assessment with OR Applications is a comprehensive guide to software reliability measurement, prediction, and control. It provides a thorough understanding of the field and gives solutions to the decision-making problems that concern software developers, engineers, practitioners, scientists, and researchers. Using operations research techniques, readers will learn how to solve problems under constraints such as cost, budget and schedules to achieve the highest possible quality level. Software Reliability Assessment with OR Applications is a comprehensive text on software engineering and applied statistics, state-of-the art software reliability modeling, techniques and methods for reliability assessment, and related optimization problems. It addresses various topics, including: unification methodologies in software reliability assessment; application of neural networks to software reliability assessment; software reliability growth modeling using stochastic differential equations; software release time and resource allocation problems; and optimum component selection and reliability analysis for fault tolerant systems. Software Reliability Assessment with OR Applications is designed to cater to the needs of software engineering practitioners, developers, security or risk managers, and statisticians. It can also be used as a textbook for advanced undergraduate or postgraduate courses in software reliability, industrial engineering, and operations research and management.

Software reliability is one of the most important characteristics of software product quality. Its measurement and management technologies during the software product life cycle are essential to produce and maintain quality/reliable software systems. Part 1 of this book introduces several aspects of software reliability modeling and its applications. Hazard rate and nonhomogeneous Poisson process (NHPP) models are investigated particularly for quantitative software reliability assessment. Further, imperfect debugging and software availability models are discussed with reference to incorporating practical factors of dynamic software behavior. Three software management problems are presented as application technologies of software reliability models: the optimal software release problem, the statistical testing-progress control, and the optimal testing-effort allocation problem. Part 2 of the book describes several recent developments in software reliability modeling and their applications as quantitative techniques for software quality/reliability measurement and assessment. The discussion includes a quality engineering analysis of human factors affecting software reliability during the design review phase, which is the upper stream of software development, as well as software reliability growth models based on stochastic differential equations and discrete calculus during the testing phase, which is the lower stream. The final part of the book provides an illustration of quality-oriented software management analysis by applying the multivariate analysis method and the existing software reliability growth models to actual process monitoring data.

Learn how to model, predict, and manage system reliability/availability throughout the development life cycle Written by a panel of authors with a wealth of industry experience, the methods and concepts presented here give readers a solid understanding of modeling and managing system and software availability and reliability through the development of real applications and products. The modeling and prediction techniques and tools are customer-focused and data-driven, and are also aligned with industry standards (Telcordia, TL 9000, ISO, etc.). Readers will get a clear understanding about what real-world reliability and availability mean through step-by-step discussions of: System availability Conceptual model of reliability and availability Why availability varies between customers Modeling availability Estimating parameters and availability from field data Estimating input parameters from laboratory data Estimating input parameters in the architecture/design stage Prediction accuracy Connecting the dots This book can be used by system architects, engineers, and developers to better understand and manage the reliability/availability of their products; quality engineers to grasp how software and hardware quality relate to system availability; and engineering students as part of a short course on system availability and software reliability.

This book presents the basic concepts of software reliability growth models (SRGMs), ranging from fundamental to advanced level. It discusses SRGM based on the non-homogeneous Poisson process (NHPP), which has been a quite successful tool in practical software reliability engineering. These models consider the debugging process as a counting process characterized by its mean value function. Model parameters have been estimated by using either the maximum likelihood method or regression. NHPP SRGMs based on inverse Weibull, generalized inverse Weibull, extended inverse Weibull, generalized extended inverse Weibull, and delayed S-shaped have been focused upon. Review of literature on SRGM has been included from the scratch to recent developments, applicable in artificial neural networks, machine learning, artificial intelligence, data-driven approaches, fault-detection, fault-correction processes, and also in random environmental conditions. This book is designed for practitioners and researchers at all levels of competency, and also targets groups who need information on software reliability engineering.