Title: Environmental performance of systems from reliability perspective

Authors: Kouroush Jenab, Liping Fang, Kourosh R. Noori

Addresses: Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Ryerson University, 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, Ontario M5B 2K3, Canada. ' Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Ryerson University, 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, Ontario M5B 2K3, Canada. ' Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Ryerson University, 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, Ontario M5B 2K3, Canada

Abstract: Increasingly, the world needs to know how to respond to challenges of environmental impact of a system composed of technologies, processes, and human activities. These environmental impacts result from human errors, system emissions (e.g., gases, radiations, sound, and dust), and waste that depletes resources (i.e., energy and materials) and/or endangers life. Therefore, this paper introduces terms and concepts used for evaluating the environmental reliability of a system. Moreover, considering environmental failure patterns (erratic, lumpy, intermittent, and smooth), human errors, and failure detection mechanisms (human sensory, monitoring device), several environmentally conscious models are developed to assess the environmental reliability of a system. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the application of the models.

Keywords: environmental management systems; EMS; environmental performance; environmental reliability; human errors; maintenance management; Markov model; reliability assessment method; environmental impact; failure detection.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2009.024070

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2009 Vol.4 No.4, pp.431 - 445

Published online: 25 Mar 2009 *

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