Our daily lives can be maintained by the high-technology systems. Computer systems are typical examples of such systems. We can enjoy our modern lives by using many computer systems. Much more importantly, we have to maintain such systems without failure, but cannot predict when such systems will fail and how to fix such systems without delay. A stochastic process is a set of outcomes of a random experiment indexed by time, and is one of the key tools needed to analyze the future behavior quantitatively. Reliability and maintainability technologies are of great interest and importance to the maintenance of such systems. Many mathematical models have been and will be proposed to describe reliability and maintainability systems by using the stochastic processes. The theme of this book is "Stochastic Models in Reliability and Main tainability. " This book consists of 12 chapters on the theme above from the different viewpoints of stochastic modeling. Chapter 1 is devoted to "Renewal Processes," under which classical renewal theory is surveyed and computa tional methods are described. Chapter 2 discusses "Stochastic Orders," and in it some definitions and concepts on stochastic orders are described and ag ing properties can be characterized by stochastic orders. Chapter 3 is devoted to "Classical Maintenance Models," under which the so-called age, block and other replacement models are surveyed. Chapter 4 discusses "Modeling Plant Maintenance," describing how maintenance practice can be carried out for plant maintenance.
From the reviews:
"This book is a collection of 12 papers on stochastic models in reliability and maintainability from various viewpoints of stochastic modelling. Each paper is written by a different set of authors and can be read independent of others. Each paper includes a bibliographical list. At the end of the book, the editor also adds a useful index. ... highly recommended to researchers in the field of reliability and maintainability, whose research will surely be facilitated by this collection of survey papers ... ." (N. Kong, Journal of the Operational Research Society, Vol. 55 (2), 2004)
"The central theme of the book is ‘Stochastic Models in Reliability and Maintenance’. ... A major contribution of this book is that it contains – in just one volume – a nice up-to-date survey of the theory and practice of stochastic models in reliability and maintenance. ... The editor selected a wide range of related topics and each of the authors selected a large sample of references to each of the papers." (Prof. Dr. E. Omey, Kwantitatieve Methoden, 2003)
"This book represents a comprehensive review on the state of the art in models and methods used for measuring and improving the dependability of systems and components. It consists of 12 articles written mainly by Japanese researchers." (Elart von Collani, Zentralblatt MATH, Vol. 994 (19), 2002)
