Citation

Petkar DV. Reliab. Eng. 1980; 1(1): 43-48.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1980, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/0143-8174(80)90013-X

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The quality of life of people of any country depends to a very large extent on the quality and reliability of products and services like transport, communications, power, broadcasting, telecasting, etc. Psychological and physical discomforts are felt by people only when things fail thereby reducing or removing the service. Everybody feels that 'immortal' services should be available, but services are created by man and are mortal like him. However, there is a need to have a reliability goal whereby one can guarantee the continuity of a service for a certain lengtht of time/distance with a known risk of failure. Reliability of services is dependent on the reliability of systems comprising them and the management. In this paper the author has tried to focus attention on the need to have reliability goals as distinct from availability goals. The paper gives the basis for setting up reliability goals for a system as well as its subsystems. The allocation of reliability goals for the subsystems is based on the operating experience with similar systems or on the basis of the knowledge of the system or both. Two typical cases of a nuclear power station and a particle accelerator are considered and reliability goals for both system and subsystems are arrived at. The author concludes by stating that reliability goals in respect of simple items produced in large quantities and used anywhere in the world are a necessity. This is so because cost of maintenance is bound to be large with such items.