Practical Reliability Engineering, 5th Edition

Preface to the Fourth Edition

It is over ten years since the last major revision and update to my book. Inevitably in that time there have been developments in engineering technology and in reliability methods. In this new edition I have tried to include all of the important changes that affect reliability engineering and management today. In keeping with the original aims of the book, I have emphasised those with practical implications.

The main changes and additions include:

• Updated and more detailed descriptions of how engineering products fail (Chapters 1, 8 and 9).
• More detailed description of the nature of variation in engineering (Chapter 2).
• Descriptions of the Petri net and M(t) methods (Chapters 6 and 12).
• More detailed description of the particular aspects of software in engineering systems, and updated descriptions of design, analysis and test methods (Chapter 10).
• Expanded descriptions of accelerated test methods for development and manufacturing (Chapters 11 and 13).
• Updated and expanded descriptions of test methods for electronics and acceptance sampling (Chapter 13).
• More detailed descriptions of management aspects, including standards, “six sigma”, and supplier management (Chapter 15).
• Updated references to standards, and updated and expanded bibliographies.

Some of the new material is adapted from my book “Test Engineering”, with permission from the publisher.

The questions and the answers manual (available separately from the publisher) have been augmented ...