Risk and Reliability Engineering for Asset Managers. This item is unavailable.Risk and Reliability Engineering for Asset Managers

This book is based on 25 years of lecturing at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands, part-time Master of Engineering Course, consultancy in various fields and activities in scientific organisations. Over this period the author learned that standard textbooks on Risk Assessment and Maintenance Optimisation are mainly written by mathematicians interested in these fields as valuable application areas for (stochastic) Operations Research. However, the assumptions of their studies are almost invariably at variance with reality; data are scarce and performance depends strongly on the quality of operating and maintenance and external factors. Thus it is no surprise that surveys invariably show that practical engineers do not read these studies. On the other hand, they show a limited insight into probabilistic aspects strongly affecting their effectiveness in decision making and management. We observe a striking difference between the evolution of reliability engineering and that of (process) control engineering. Whilst the former is still regarded as a specialism and add-on to a finished technical curriculum, the latter is fully integrated with the education of, for instance, chemical engineers. Whereas (advanced) control is nowadays indispensable, fully accepted and integrated with design and operation, the progress of the reliability engineering discipline over the last 50 years leaves to be desired. This book aims to help practical asset managers, with a minimum level of probabilistic education, to better analyse managerial problems in the risk and safety area, to substantiate related decisions in terms of effectiveness and cost/benefit, to gain insight in the stochastic patterns to be expected over the plant life and in the feedback offered by field data.