This volume presents concepts, policies and cost models for various long-term warranty and maintenance contracts. It offers several numerical examples for estimating costs to both the manufacturer and consumer. Long-term warranties and maintenance contracts are becoming increasingly popular, as these types of aftersales services provide assurance to consumers that they can enjoy long, reliable service, and protect them from defects and the potentially high costs of repairs. Studying long-term warranty and service contracts is important to manufacturers and consumers alike, as offering long-term warranty and maintenance contracts produce additional costs for manufacturers / service providers over the product’s service life. These costs must be factored into the price, or the manufacturer / dealer will incur losses instead of making a profit. On the other hand, the buyer / consumer needs to weigh the cost of maintaining it over its service life and to decide whether or not these policies are worth purchasing. There are a number of complexities involved in developing failure and cost models for these policies due to uncertainties concerning the service life, usage pattern, maintenance work and long-term costs of rectifications. Mathematical models for predicting failures and expected costs for various one-dimensional long-term warranty policies are developed at the system level and analyzed by taking into account the uncertainties in connection with longer coverage periods and the rectification costs over the warranty period. Failures and costs are modeled using stochastic techniques and illustrated by means of numerical examples for estimating costs to the manufacturer and consumer. Various rectification policies are proposed and analyzed. The models developed here can be used to aid in managerial decisions on purchasing products with long-term warranty policies and maintenance contracts or outsourcing maintenance.

This fourth edition of the book provides readers with a detailed explanation of PLM, enabling them to gain a full understanding and the know-how to implement PLM within their own business environment. This new and expanded edition has been fully updated to reflect the numerous technological and management advances made in PLM since the release of the third edition in 2014, including chapters on both the Internet of Things and Industry 4.0. The book describes the environment in which products are ideated, developed, manufactured, supported and retired before addressing the main components of PLM and PLM Initiatives. These include product-related business processes, product data, product data management (PDM) systems, other PLM applications, best practices, company objectives and organisation. Key activities in PLM Initiatives include Organisational Change Management (OCM) and Project Management. Lastly, it addresses the PLM Initiative, showing the typical steps and activities of a PLM project or initiative. Enhancing readers’ understanding of PLM, the book enables them to develop the skills needed to implement PLM successfully and achieve world-class product performance across the lifecycle.

As the 21st century begins, we are faced with opportunities and challenges of available technology as well as pressured to create strategic and tactical plans for future technology. Worldwide, IT professionals are sharing and trading concepts and ideas for effective IT management, and this co-operation is what leads to solid IT management practices. This volume is a collection of papers that present IT management perspectives from professionals around the world. The papers seek to offer new ideas, refine old ones, and pose interesting scenarios to help the reader develop company-sensitive management strategies.

Offers a holistic approach to guiding product design, manufacturing, and after-sales support as the manufacturing industry transitions from a product-oriented model to service-oriented paradigm This book provides fundamental knowledge and best industry practices in reliability modelling, maintenance optimization, and service parts logistics planning. It aims to develop an integrated product-service system (IPSS) synthesizing design for reliability, performance-based maintenance, and spare parts inventory. It also presents a lifecycle reliability-inventory optimization framework where reliability, redundancy, maintenance, and service parts are jointly coordinated. Additionally, the book aims to report the latest advances in reliability growth planning, maintenance contracting and spares inventory logistics under non-stationary demand condition. Reliability Engineering and Service provides in-depth chapter coverage of topics such as: Reliability Concepts and Models; Mean and Variance of Reliability Estimates; Design for Reliability; Reliability Growth Planning; Accelerated Life Testing and Its Economics; Renewal Theory and Superimposed Renewals; Maintenance and Performance-Based Logistics; Warranty Service Models; Basic Spare Parts Inventory Models; Repairable Inventory Systems; Integrated Product-Service Systems (IPPS), and Resilience Modeling and Planning Guides engineers to design reliable products at a low cost Assists service engineers in providing superior after-sales support Enables managers to respond to the changing market and customer needs Uses end-of-chapter case studies to illustrate industry best practice Lifecycle approach to reliability, maintenance and spares provisioning Reliability Engineering and Service is an important book for graduate engineering students, researchers, and industry-based reliability practitioners and consultants.

The globalization of manufacturing is a key development in most industries over the last decade. New technologies like e-commerce, genetic algorithms, and neural networks have to be adapted to the manufacturing environment. This book deals with methods and tools suitable for designing, managing and controlling processes within the supply chain. Virtual Enterprise and Extended Enterprise are the terms which describe the challenges for global production management. The implementation of global production management requires integration of business processes, technical and organizational aspects. The main topics of the papers selected for this book are therefore: Strategic manufacturing issues and design of virtual enterprises; Supply chain management; Performance measurement and management information; Business process engineering; Modeling and simulation; Advanced scheduling approaches and decision support; IT systems to support global production . The book contains case studies as well as reports on research findings. The papers represent a summary of current issues which have been presented at the International Conference on Advances in Production Management Systems (APMS) in September 1999. This event was sponsored by the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP), and was organized by the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology (IPK), Berlin. The authors are leading experts within the international community in the field of production management. Global Production Management is suitable as a reference for researchers and practitioners in global manufacturing, supply chain management, logistics and IT services, and consultants. It can also be used as further reading for advanced courses on management and manufacturing.

This book presents the proceedings of the IDEAS Conference, which is intended as a forum for a new generation of researchers. IDEAS is an arena that encourages researchers to defy their field's boundaries, leveraging disciplinary mindset into contributions to broad domains within the Science, Technology, Engineering, Entrepreneurship, and Management. Further, IDEAS explores novel questions and challenges existing policies and practices on how to apply science and technology as an input to design more innovative and sustainable systems that promote human well-being.

This book efficiently and effectively solves complex business problems using the theory of inventive problem-solving tools (TRIZ). With 200+ examples and 100+ tasks (including 30 for independent study), it equips readers to address real-world challenges and develop essential skills. Aimed at individuals responsible for solving business problems, it provides expert guidance and specialized TRIZ tools for practical success.