Designing Complex Systems

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Chapter 8

Maintained Systems

8.1 Failure and Repair in the Two Domains

From our daily experience, we would conclude that maintenance seems to be an ines-

capable feature of systems. Cars need regular maintenance and occasional repairs,

houses need to be maintained (painted, repaired), all appliances develop faults and

are either repaired or replaced, organizations need constant management attention

and training in order to remain efficient, and so on. To get a better understanding

of what drives this need for maintenance, we must, for a moment, go back to the

physical domain and consider some general characteristics of physical systems, as

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