Table Of ContentOPERATIONAL RELIABILITY AND
SYSTEMATIC MAINTENANCE
OPERATIONAL RELIABILITY AND
SYSTEMATIC MAINTENANCE
Edited by
K. HOLMBERG & A. FOLKESON
Editorial board
C. AAGE, S. ANDERSSON, B. BERGMAN, A. FOLKESON (Secretary),
K. HOLMBERG (Chairman), R. OSTVIK
ELSEVIER APPLIED SCIENCE
LONDON Baoncad R atNonE LWond oYnO NRewK Y ork
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Operational reliability and systematic maintenance.
1. Engineering equipment. Testing
I. Holmberg, K. II. Folkeson A.
620.004
ISBN 1-85166-612-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Operational reliability and systematic maintenance / K. Holmberg & A. Folkeson (editors).
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-85166-612-5
1. Reliability (Engineering) 2. Maintainability (Engineering) 3. Accelerated life testing.
4. Industrial equipment—Reliability. I. Holmberg, K. (Kenneth) II. Folkeson, A.
TA169.069 1991 91-11181
620’.00452—dc20
A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 91011181
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Foreword
Scientists from four countries cooperated in a research effort aimed at the
improvement of operational reliability via innovations in design and
testing and systematic maintenance. The scientists had varied back-
grounds ranging from mathematics to applied mechanical engineering,
and the results of this effort are documented in this book. The research
programme involved seminars and workshops open to academia and
industry, and the undersigned has had the pleasure of participating in two
of these. The level of discussions was generally of a high quality,
particularly with regard to the engineering issues; the unique aspect was
the comradeship between those with a mathematical orientation and
those with an engineering orientation. I am convinced that more such
collaborative platforms will be the way of the future, and will help
enhance the state of the art of the subject.
By way of a selective overview, and an associated commentary, the
following points come to mind.
Soren Andersson emphasizes, and rightly so, the importance of testing,
making it an integral part of the product development process. This is in
line with Taguchi's call for planned experimentation and testing.
The word 'tribology' refers to the science and technology of interacting
surfaces in relative motion. Kenneth Holmberg gives what is to me an
excellent overview of tribological accelerated life testing. In this paper, he
describes various types of wear and the effects of lubricants on these.
Upon reading this work, I am left with the conviction that even though
wear can be thought of and described in physical terms, its characteriz-
vi Foreword
ation has to be in terms of probabilistic considerations. The role of
factorial designs for accelerated testing is alluded to as a way of getting
more information, but the notion of information needs elaboration. Eldar
Onsayen continues with Holmberg's theme on accelerated life testing of
tribological components but emphasizes the role of condition monitoring
with such tests. For statisticians interested in getting a better feel for the
engineer's notion of ageing and wear, the above two papers would be a
valuable overview.
Akersten, Bergman and Porn talk about reliability information from
failure data, and in so doing give an exposition of Bayes-Empirical
Bayes modelling and its role in reliability analysis. Also, their discussion
on various sources of potential information and the utility of such
information is de facto an advocacy for the use of 'meta analysis' in
reliability. The paper by Huseby and Natvig is more mathematical than
the other papers in this collection; the emphasis here is on the use of
dependent expert opinion in reliability-a topic which is gaining promi-
nence in the practice of the subject. Finally, Simola, Laakso, and
Hanninen, Kosonen and Unga talk of the occurrence and analysis of
point process data in maintainability studies of nuclear power plants. A
Bayesian analysis of their data would be an interesting alternative to the
strategy taken by the aforementioned, especially since the nuclear indus-
try has accumulated rich sources of expert opinions and engineering
judgments in dealing with its operations.
The papers by Al-Najjar, Kuoppala et al. and Radzikowski emphasize
the role of condition monitoring in reliability studies. This is one area of
research which, though very relevant and promising, has pretty much
been overlooked by most theoretical researchers in reliability even
though its connection with the Cox model of biostatistics is obvious. I
am hopeful that future research in reliability theory will focus on this
issue which seems to be gaining much favour with engineers.
The final five papers of this volume take reliability engineering into the
high-technology arena by talking about 'expert systems' and the use of
computer graphic visual images in monitoring the performance of com-
plex systems. These appear to be attractive possibilities whose impact
only time can tell. A natural possibility for advancing the state of the art
here is to merge the ideas of Huseby and Natvig with regard to expert
opinion into the general schemata of the above five papers.
By way of a closing comment, it is gratifying to note that the theory
and practice of reliability is thriving in the Scandinavian countries and in
Europe as a whole. This book is a fine testament to the collaborative
Foreword vii
efforts between engineers, mathematicians and statisticians working on
reliability problems. Hopefully this effort is a precursor to similar future
endeavours. I enjoyed my association with the individuals involved, both
professionally and personally.
Nozer D. Singpurwalla
Washington, DC, USA
Preface
This book gives a review of the results created by a Nordic research
programme, 'Terotechnology-Operational Reliability and Systematic
Maintenance', which has been running from 1988 through 1990. It has
involved the following research centres and institutes in Denmark,
Finland, Norway and Sweden:
- The Technical University of Denmark (DTH), Department of Ocean
Engineering and Institute for Production Management and Industrial
Engineering
- The Foundation for Scientific and Industrial Research at the Norwe-
gian Institute of Technology (SINTEF), Production Engineering
Department
- Linkoping University (LiTH), Department of Design and Production
- RisB National Laboratory, Denmark, System Analysis Department
and Electronics Department
- The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Department of
Fluid Technology and Department of Machine Elements
- The Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT), Electrical Engin-
eering Laboratory and Production Engineering Laboratory
- The University of Oslo (UiO), Institute of Mathematics
Important sources of finance have been:
- The Nordic Industrial Fund
The Danish Technical Research Council (STVF)
-
The Council of Technology (TeknologirAdet), Denmark
-
