John X. Wang - What Every Engineer Should Know About Risk Engineering and Management

Cover

Page a

Page b

WHAT EVERY ENGINEER SHOULD KNOW

A Series

Editor

William H. Middendorf

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Cincinnati
Cincinnati, Ohio

1. What Every Engineer Should Know About Patents, William G. Konold, Bruce Tittel, Donald F. Frei, and David S. Stallard
2. What Every Engineer Should Know About Product Liability, James F. Thorpe and William H. Middendorf
3. What Every Engineer Should Know About Microcomputers: Hardware/Software Design, A Step-by-Step Example, William S. Bennett and Carl F. Evert, Jr.
4. What Every Engineer Should Know About Economic Decision Analysis, Dean S. Shupe
5. What Every Engineer Should Know About Human Resources Management, Desmond D. Martin and Richard L. Shell
6. What Every Engineer Should Know About Manufacturing Cost Estimating, Eric M. Malstrom
7. What Every Engineer Should Know About Inventing, William H. Middendorf
8. What Every Engineer Should Know About Technology Transfer and Innovation, Louis N. Mogavero and Robert S. Shane
9. What Every Engineer Should Know About Project Management, Arnold M. Ruskin and W. Eugene Estes
10. What Every Engineer Should Know About Computer-Aided Design and Computer-Aided Manufacturing: The CAD/CAM Revolution, John K. Krouse
11. What Every Engineer Should Know About Robots, Maurice I. Zeldman
12. What Every Engineer Should Know About Microcomputer Systems Design and Debugging, Bill Wray and Bill Crawford
13. What Every Engineer Should Know About Engineering Information Resources, Margaret T. Schenk and James K. Webster
14. What Every Engineer Should Know About Microcomputer Program Design, Keith R. Wehmeyer
15. What Every Engineer Should Know About Computer Modeling and Simulation, Don M. Ingels
16. What Every Engineer Should Know About Engineering Workstations, Justin E. Harlow III

Page c

1. What Every Engineer Should Know About Practical CAD/CAM Applications, John Stark
2. What Every Engineer Should Know About Threaded Fasteners: Materials and Design, Alexander Blake
3. What Every Engineer Should Know About Data Communications, Carl Stephen Clifton
4. What Every Engineer Should Know About Material and Component Failure, Failure Analysis, and Litigation, Lawrence E. Murr
5. What Every Engineer Should Know About Corrosion, Philip Schweitzer
6. What Every Engineer Should Know About Lasers, D. C. Winburn
7. What Every Engineer Should Know About Finite Element Analysis, edited by John R. Brauer
8. What Every Engineer Should Know About Patents: Second Edition, William G. Konold, Bruce Tittel, Donald F. Frei, and David S. Stallard
9. What Every Engineer Should Know About Electronic Communications Systems, L. R. McKay
10. What Every Engineer Should Know About Quality Control, Thomas Pyzdek
11. What Every Engineer Should Know About Microcomputers: Hardware/Software Design, A Step-by-Step Example. Second Edition, Revised and Expanded, William S. Bennett, Carl F. Evert, and Leslie C. Lander
12. What Every Engineer Should Know About Ceramics, Solomon Musikant
13. What Every Engineer Should Know About Developing Plastics Products, Bruce C. Wendle
14. What Every Engineer Should Know About Reliability and Risk Analysis, M. Modarres
15. What Every Engineer Should Know About Finite Element Analysis: Second Edition, Revised and Expanded, edited by John R. Brauer
16. What Every Engineer Should Know About Accounting and Finance, Jae K. Shim and Norman Henteleff
17. What Every Engineer Should Know About Project Management: Second Edition, Revised and Expanded, Arnold M. Ruskin and W. Eugene Estes
18. What Every Engineer Should Know About Concurrent Engineering, Thomas A. Salomone
19. What Every Engineer Should Know About Ethics, Kenneth K. Humphreys
20. What Every Engineer Should Know About Risk Engineering and Managment, John X. Wang and Marvin L. Roush

ADDITIONAL VOLUMES IN PREPARATION

Page i

WHAT EVERY ENGINEER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT
RISK ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT

John X. Wang
General Electric Company
Erie, Pennsylvania

Marvin L. Roush
University of Maryland
College Park, Maryland

Page ii

ISBN: 0-8247-9301-3

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

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Page iii

Engineering of systems always involves a variety of elements of risk, especially when an undertaking is the first of its kind. A large-scale engineering design can fail in many ways and the failure modes are sometimes difficult to completely anticipate due to the system complexity. Since the objective of engineering is to design and build things right the first time, knowledge of how to manage technical risk efficiently and effectively can be quite important.

The development of engineering has been a cumulative process and so is the progress of risk engineering and management. The long history of engineering has left us a rich collection of examples, both in terms of successes and failures. In this book, we have used a few selected examples as the starting point of individual chapters. It is our hope that these examples will help the readers to understand some of the ways in which engineering systems can fail, the effects that these failures may impose, and the opportunities that engineers have to turn failure into success.