Book excerpt: Engineering systems and products are an important element of the world economy and each year billions of dollars are spent to develop, manufacture, operate, and maintain systems and products around the globe. Because of this, global competition is requiring reliability professionals to work closely with other departments involved in engineering development during the product design and manufacturing phase. Applied Reliability for Engineers is an attempt to meet the need for a single volume that addresses a wide range of applied reliability topics. The material is treated in such a manner that the reader will require no previous knowledge to understand the text. The sources of most of the information presented are given in a reference section at the end of each chapter. At appropriate places, the book contains examples along with their solutions. At the end of each chapter there are numerous problems to test reader comprehension. This volume is thus suitable for use as a textbook as well as for reference. Applied Reliability for Engineers is useful to design professionals, system engineers, reliability specialists, graduate and senior undergraduate students, researchers and instructors of reliability engineering, and engineers-at-large.