Reliability, Maintainability, and Supportability: Best Practices for Systems Engineers

Acknowledgments

I have had the good fortune to work with many talented and caring people who have shared their knowledge and helped shape my thinking in this area. First and foremost, I want to thank the late Norman A. Marlow who gave me the freedom to pursue interesting and important problems in network and service reliability and guided my early career at Bell Laboratories. Elsayed A. Elsayed and Endre Boros promoted my pleasant and fruitful relationship with Rutgers University. Many other colleagues and friends contributed their time and expertise to help me learn more about reliability engineering. These include Susan Albin, Sigmund J. Amster, Lawrence A. Baxter, Michele Boulanger, Chun Kin Chan, Ramon V. Leon, Michael LuValle, and William Q. Meeker. José Ramirez-Marquez helped me pass the torch. Working with Bill Frakes on the SUPER project was an education and a pleasure. A. Blanton Godfrey, Jeffrey H. Hooper, and William V. Robinson provided invaluable management support, and Jon Bankert and Jack Sipress gave me an opportunity to work with the Bell Labs Undersea Cable Laboratory where I learned a great deal of practical reliability engineering. I am grateful to Stevens Institute of Technology for employing me to teach a course in the Systems Engineering program based on these ideas. I am deeply grateful to Chun Kin Chan, Bill Frakes, and D. A. Hoeflin for carefully reading the manuscript and offering excellent suggestions. I have also benefitted from conversations with ...