Assessing systems reliability: a Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) approach

Assessing the reliability performance of complex system involves dealing with events whose occurrence cannot be predicted easily. Not only a good descriptive procedure of the system's components is required but the solution requires some means by which the likelihood of the events can be expressed in terms of quantitative methods. This can be done by adopting a probabilistic risk and reliability assessment method to assess system behaviour. This requires enhancing the reliability analysis with a probabilistic risk analysis technique. The procedure of integration suggested in this work is called Probabilistic Risk Analysis [PRA]. It involves: 1) Identification of the potential events of failures and their modes of failures. 2) Estimation of the consequences of these failures on the total system. 3) Estimation of the probability of occurrence of each event of failure. 4) Comparison of the results of the analysis against an acceptability criterion or criteria. The third step is the focus of this paper where the novelty of this work appears. Rather than drawing a deterministic FTD for identifying probability of occurrences of the failure events a probabilistic one is suggested to cater for any risks or uncertainties involved in the system. By allowing probabilistic input of basic events a probabilistic top event is produced giving managers more freedom to check among a range of failure probabilities that the system might fall in rather than one limited deterministic failure value. This gives more practicality to the assessment of the whole system resulting in better actions and higher reliable performance

A soft systems methodology for transforming organisations to product-service systems (application in defence and construction industry)

Nowadays organisations from different business sectors and with contrasting management approaches are increasingly prioritising the satisfaction of clients’ needs through service provision. The transformation of a company from predominantly product only to a product and service mix is studied. The transformation will generally involve the transfer of some activities from one part of the supply chain to another and, in some cases, this involves the transfer of activities previously carried out by the client to the product-service company. This paper describes the application of SSM (Soft Systems Methodology) to this transformation such that the views of those stakeholders across the supply chain can be captured and conflicting expectations and views can be highlighted. We provide an initial model for developing a SSM in defence construction organisations to show that the general approach is relevant to this particular feature of transformation. The SSM approach will lead to identification of barriers to transformation, the understanding of implications on overall performance and – importantly – the joint consideration of these matters and solution generation by customer and supplier in a non-confrontational fashion. The overall objective is to make recommendations that alleviate identified concerns, barriers and obstacles to this transformation. The outcomes of the research will show how the SSM conceptual models can help managers in either sector to realise the necessary activities needed to perform the transformation in a successful manner

A systems approach for balancing internal company capability and external client demand for integrated product-service solutions

This paper offers a systems thinking approach for easing the tension between the front office (responsible for meeting client requirements) and the back office (responsible for providing necessary company capabilities) in the transformation of a product focused company to a product service provider. These parts of the company may have competing objectives and cultures that must be reconciled to ease the train of tension between them. We propose consideration of these parts as individual systems within a system of systems construct and suggest the creation of a central function as a third system, the purpose of which is to manage the interoperability between the front and back offices. The central function provides a leadership role and an integrating function for the company, the outcome of which should be firstly to act as a catalyst for changing the mindset of individuals within the organization towards the product service endeavour and, secondly, a strategic balance in terms of implementing policy in accordance with the changing external business environment. The management of this balance between the product system and the service system within the same organization is a crucial element of sustainability

Identification of induced complexity in product service system enterprises

At present, there is a trend toward developing a product service system business model for complex products, and many traditional manufacturing organizations are transforming to product service systems. In general, this will lead to greater dependency between certain organizations within multiorganization enterprises which will, in turn, induce complexity. The role matrix technique has been applied as a decision support tool for organizational transformation. This article shows its usefulness in an enterprise context and, through a case study in particular, in the product service system context. An analysis of a number of previous case studies has indicated how the role matrix technique characterizes types of industry, and the focus case study of product service system transformation in the transport sector is shown to include manufacturing and service structure, which leads to considerable induced complexity. The article concludes by showing how the role matrix technique is a useful decision support technique for managers engaged in enterprise transformation and, for the specific case study considered, how complexity may be induced during the product service system transformation