Service Reliability Theory and Engineering, II: Models and Examples

Abstract

In Part I of this work, the primitives, concepts, terminology, and fundamental ideas of service reliability theory and engineering were developed. The purpose of this paper is to describe some mathematical models useful for service reliability engineering and to illustrate the use of these ideas by examination of some examples. The paper deals mainly with examples from the author’s experiences in the telecommunications industry. Failure modes and failure mechanisms for telecommunications services are described and some mathematical models suitable for reliability engineering for these services are reviewed. The models help with discussion of service reliability figures of merit and metrics and with the specific tasks required to design a service to be reliable.

Key Words:

• Accessibility
• continuity
• release
• service quality
• transactions

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Tortorella

Michael Tortorella He is Research Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Rutgers University and the Managing Director of Assured Networks, LLC. Complementing his research focus in reliability engineering are current interests in stochastic flow networks, stochastic stability, and software engineering. He received the Ph. D. degree from Purdue University and was a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories for many years. He was formerly an Associate Editor of Naval Research Logistics and is currently Department Editor for Reliability Modeling and Analysis at the IIE Transactions on Quality and Reliability. He is author or co-author of numerous publications in mathematical physics, applied probability, reliability engineering, and numerical methods.