Modern societies depend on the smooth operation of many complex systems (designed and built by humans) that provide a variety of outputs (products and services). These include transport systems (trains, buses, ferries, ships and ae- planes), communication systems (television, telephone and computer networks), utilities (water, gas and electricity networks), manufacturing plants (to produce - dustrial products and consumer durables), processing plants (to extract and process minerals and oil), hospitals (to provide services) and banks (for financial tra- actions) to name a few. Every system built by humans is unreliable in the sense that it degrades with age and/or usage. A system is said to fail when it is no longer capable of delivering the designed outputs. Some failures can be catastrophic in the sense that they can result in serious economic losses, affect humans and do serious damage to the environment. Typical examples include the crash of an aircraft in flight, failure of a sewerage processing plant and collapse of a bridge. The degradation can be c- trolled, and the likelihood of catastrophic failures reduced, through maintenance actions, including preventive maintenance, inspection, condition monitoring and design-out maintenance. Corrective maintenance actions are needed to restore a failed system to operational state through repair or replacement of the components that caused the failure. Maintenance has moved from being an engineering activity after a system has been put into operation into an important issue that needs to be addressed during the design and manufacturing or building of the system.
Professor Kobbacy is a professor of management science at the Centre of Operational Research and Applied Statistics, and also the Director of Management and Management Sciences Research Institute, at Salford University, UK. He has a long-standing interest in "applied" operational research. He has previously lectured in operational research at Strathclyde University after gaining industrial experience in a major oil company. His research interests in operations management are directed towards the development of intelligent management systems for maintenance scheduling and inventory control. His research in preventive maintenance scheduling and management has been funded by industry and research councils. Professor Kobbacy was awarded the Operational Research President’s medal in 1990 and was a vice president of the Operational Research Society, UK, from 2002 to 2004.
Professor Murthy obtained B.E. and M.E. degrees from Jabalpur University and the Indian Institute of Science in India, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University. He is currently a Research Professor in the School of Engineering at the University of Queensland and a Senior Scientific Advisor to the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He has held visiting appointments at several universities in the USA, Europe and Asia. His current research interests include various aspects of technology management (new product development, strategic management of technology), operations management (lot sizing, quality, reliability, maintenance), and post-sale support (warranties, service contracts). He has run short courses for industry on various topics in technology management, operations management and post-sale support in Australia, Asia, Europe and the USA.
