Review
“Performability Engineering has as its
scope the evaluation of all aspects of system performance. This
encompasses the evaluation of the reliability of the system, its costs,
its sustainability, its quality, its safety, its risk, and all of its
performance outputs. In covering this broad scope, the objective is to
provide a unified framework for comparing and integrating all aspects of
system performance. This provides the manager and decision-maker with a
complete, consistent picture of the system. This is the promise and
exciting prospect of Performability Engineering.
The chapters
included in this handbook are diverse and represent the vitality of the
different aspects of Performability Engineering. There are
management-oriented chapters on the roles of reliability, safety,
quality assurance, risk management, and performance management in the
realm of performability management. There are chapters providing
overview and the state-of-the-art on basic approaches being used in
various disciplines. There are original technical contributions
describing new methods and tools. Finally, there are chapters focusing
on design and operational applications. The reader therefore has a
veritable garden from which to feast from this impressive collection of
chapters in the handbook.
In short, it is
expected that this handbook will be found to be very useful by
practicing engineers and researchers of the 21st Century in
pursuing this challenging and relevant area for sustainable
development.”
Dr William Vesely,
Manager, Risk Assessment, Office of Safety and Mission Assurance, NASA
" The editor of the present Handbook
of Performability Engineering, Dr. Krishna B. Misra, a retired eminent
professor of the Indian Institute of Technology, took to reliability
nearly four decades ago and is a renowned scholar of reliability.
Professor Misra was awarded a plaque by IEEE Reliability Society, in
1995, “in recognition
of his meritorious and outstanding contributions to Reliability
Engineering and furthering of Reliability Engineering Education and
Development in India". Upon
his retirement in 2005 from IIT, Kharagpur, where he established the
first ever Reliability Engineering Centre in India and the postgraduate
course in Reliability Engineering in 1982, he launched the
International Journal of Performability Engineering in 2005 and has
since led the journal as its inaugural Editor-in-Chief.
…. The
timely publication of this handbook necessarily reflects the changing
scenario of the 21st century’s holistic view of designing,
producing and using products, systems or services which satisfy the
performance requirements of a customer to the best possible extent.
Having reviewed the contents of this voluminous handbook,
and its contributed chapters, I find it clearly covers the entire
canvas of performability: quality, reliability, maintainability, safety
and sustainability. The handbook addresses how today’s systems need to
be not only dependable (implying survivability and safety) but
also sustainable. Modern systems need to be addressed in a
practical way instead of simply as a mathematical abstract, often
bearing no physical meaning at all. In fact, performability engineering
not only aims at producing products, systems and services that are
dependable but also involves developing economically viable and safe
processes of modern technologies, including clean production that
entails minimal environmental pollution. Performability engineering
extends the traditionally defined performance requirements to
incorporate the modern notion of requiring optimal quantities of
material and energy in order to yield safe and reliable products that
can be disposed of without causing any adverse effects on the
environment at the end of their life cycle.
The chapters included in this handbook have undergone a
thorough review and have been carefully devised. These chapters
collectively address the issues related to performability engineering. I
expect the handbook will create an interest in performability and will
bring about the intended interaction between various players of
performability engineering.
I firmly believe this handbook will be widely used by the
practicing engineers as well as serve as a guide to students and
teachers, who have an interest in conducting research in the totality of
performance requirements of the modern systems of practical use. I would
also like to congratulate Dr. Misra once again for taking the bold
initiative of editing this historical volume.”
Way Kuo,
Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Reliability
President, City University of Hong Kong
Formally Dean of Engineering and University Distinguished Professor,
University of Tennessee
"I was truly
impressed by its overall appearance, layout, diversity of chapters and
the impressive amount of work you, personally, have put into it. No
doubt, this is the first book, which interrelates the subject matter of
the various chapters to the platform of Performability. .. One has to
learn a lot by going deeper into the various contributions and
certainly, this book will stand as one which will motivate more work by
many new researchers in the coming years."
John
Kontoleon, Professor,
ECE Department, Aristotle University,
Greece
"This is an excellent handbook that covers
comprehensive topics including engineering design, system reliability
modeling, safety analysis and perspectives, design optimization,
environmental risk analysis, engineering management, roadmap for
sustainability, performance economical analysis, quality management and
engineering, process control, six sigma, robust design, continuous
improvements, load-sharing system analysis, repairable system
reliability, multiple phase-mission system reliability and imperfect
coverage, Markov and Semi-Markov system reliability analysis, field data
analysis, multi-state system reliability analysis, optimization,
accelerated life testing, fault trees, common cause analysis,
human-system interaction analysis, safety control analysis,
probabilistic risk assessment, risk analysis and management,
maintenance, sustainability, performability, replacement policies, MEMS,
medical device analysis, electro and mechanical reliability assessment,
Wireless communication network reliability, distributed system
computing, fault-tolerant system reliability, software reliability, and
reliability growth models.
I am sure that many, if not all,
practitioners and researchers in the areas of reliability, safety,
maintainability and related fields, including beginning students who are
majoring or thinking of entering in reliability/performability research,
will find this Handbook useful in many ways – looking for methodologies,
solutions, problems or research ideas."
Hoang Pham,
Professor & Chair
Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering
Rutgers University
Performability engineering is defined as aggregative effort in achieving
desired levels of sustainability, safety, quality, reliability and
maintainability of products, systems or services. The scope of this
complex discipline is extremely wide: from evaluating and optimizing
system cost, quality and reliability to estimating and mitigating
associated risks. All these aspects are based on analysis of system
performance, which urges analysts to elaborate a unified framework for
solving different problems based on a holistic view of designing,
producing and using the systems. Developing such unified framework for
providing decision-makers with complete and consistent information is
primary goal of performability engineering.
"Handbook of Performability Engineering" is the first handbook, which
integrates the subject matter of the various analytical and practical
approaches within the wide platform of performability.
Some
of the chapters present design and operational applications. Other
chapters are management-oriented and address reliability, safety,
quality assurance, risk management, and performance management. Original
technical contributions describing new methods and tools complemented by
overviews presenting the state-of-the-art of basic approaches related to
performability engineering.
Looking to
the number of pages in each chapter and the arrangement of chapters, it
can be said that the editor has carefully devised this voluminous
Handbook, which in some way appears to be a compendium to his effort
when he launched the
International Journal of Performability Engineering
in 2005 to bring different players in the constituent areas of
performability engineering to a common platform of interaction.
The reviewer contends that this handbook will be widely used by the
practicing engineers and managers in the areas of reliability, safety,
sustainability and related fields. It can also serve as a guide to
students and teachers as well as a useful asset to researchers looking
for ideas, methodologies, problems and solutions. I believe that the
handbook will create an increasing interest in performability
engineering and will stimulate interaction between researchers working
in different fields related to performability engineering. I would like
to congratulate Dr. Misra for editing this historical volume.
Gregory Levitin
The
Israel Electric Corporation Ltd.
