This book is a part of series produced by Chapman and Hall on systems effectiveness. As such it will appeal to those readers whose academic teaching interests are focused on technical and managerial aspects of product and system design in general and system maintainability in particular.
The book comprises five parts. Part one of the book concentrates on maintainability and system effectiveness. The concept of maintainability and system effectiveness is presented using a systems approach and functionality. System effectiveness using life‐cycle cost and technical and operational effectiveness is presented. A case study illustrating maintenance costs is included in this part; organizational aspects, different maintenance policies and their related costs are discussed.
Part three of the book deals with maintainability analysis, which includes maintainability measures and maintainability statistics.
Part four addresses the issues dealing with maintenance engineering. This includes maintainability allocation, anthropometric analysis, testability analysis, condition monitoring and prediction of maintainability.
Part five of the book is devoted to maintainability management. It includes a system maintenance model and assessment of field data. Comparison between parametric and distribution‐free treatment of field data is dealt with in this part.
The book introduces the principles of maintainability from the point of view of engineering, mathematics and management in an integrated manner. It gives a very clear insight about the topics from a practical perspective. It is an easily readable book and may be a good library resource for engineering students and practitioners. It is a significant contribution towards filling the gap between the existing literature and the knowledge needed for the design, operation and maintenance of future complex systems.
However it is felt that in part five of the book the concept of continuous improvement could be improved.
