Product Reliability: Specification and Performance

Currently, reliability issues are not addressed effectively in new product development. Product reliability depends on the technical decisions made in the early stages and the impact of commercial outcomes in the latter stages. With an effective methodology for reliability performance and specification, one can make better decisions.

Product Reliability develops a framework linking reliability specifications and product performance in new product development by: (1) considering how customer needs and business aims can be translated into product development so that desired performance is met/exceeded; (2) discussing the data requirements, tools and techniques needed to build models vital to decision-making; (3) providing an approach applicable to many products.

This book is suitable for managers and engineers involved in new product design. It can be used as a text for graduate courses on design, manufacturing, new product development and operations management and in various engineering disciplines.

D. N. P. 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 authored or coauthored 20 book chapters, 145 journal papers and over 130 conference papers. He is a member of several professional societies and is on the editorial boards of seven international journals. 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.

T. Osteras obtained his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, in 1990 and 1998 respectively. In the first years of his career he was a consultant, carrying out risk analyses of offshore oil and gas processing facilities. He was then granted a Ph.D. scholarship to conduct research on how to efficiently design for reliability, maintainability and safety. While carrying out his Ph.D., he also worked part-time as a researcher on reliability and safety related projects in SINTEF. In 1999 he was appointed coordinator for a long-term research project on Integrated Product Development, funded by the Norwegian Research Council. He later held a postdoctoral fellowship, and since 2004 he has been an Associate Professor at the Department of Product Design Engineering, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

M. Rausand isProfessor of Safety and Reliability Engineering at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). In the first four years of his professional career, he was a lecturer in mathematical statistics at NTNU, where he lectured courses in reliability and risk analysis. Over the next ten years he was engaged in various safety and reliability projects at the research institute SINTEF, mostly related to the Norwegian offshore oil and gas activities. In the last four years of this period he was director of SINTEF Department of Safety and Reliability. In 1989 he again joined NTNU as a full time professor. He has been chairman of NTNU’s Department of Machine Design for five years and vice-dean of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering for six years. In 1995/96 he was visiting professor at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland, and in 2002/03 he was visiting professor at Ecole des Mines de Nantes. Professor Rausand is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Technical Sciences, and of the Royal Norwegian Society of Letters and Science. He has authored or coauthored 8 book chapters, 22 journal papers and around 40 conference papers. He has run a wide range of short courses for industry on various topics in reliability assessment and risk analysis in Asia, Europe, South America, and the USA.