An international Workshop on "Lifecycle Reliability of Engineering Systems (IWLRES-2019) was organised by the Department of Mechanical Engineering, School of Engineering and Technology, Kaziranga University on 22 and 23 Apr 19.

The workshop was attended by a richly diverse section of industries represented by over 40 senior professionals from SKF India Ltd., ONGC, Numaligarh Refinery Ltd, Lakwa Thermal Power Station, CSIR NEIST, JEC, GIMT, Guwahati as well as local units of Indian Army and Indian Air Force, in addition to the students and faculty of Kaziranga University.

The participants had the benefit of learning from and interacting with some of the internationally renowned experts in the field from IIT, Kharagpur, Center for Reliability Sciences and Technologies, Chang Gung University, Taiwan, NERIST, SKF India Ltd. and AEGCL. 

One of the focused thrust points for facilitating Indian Industries to be globally competitive is the 'designing in' of reliability of industrial systems, processes and products. Strategies for reliability of large engineering systems have evolved rapidly in recent times towards increasing effectiveness. Also, maintenance, as an important enabler of reliability, is now well poised to leverage technologies of Industry 4.0 such as AI, IOT, Data Analytics, etc in a big way. This workshop was highly successful in creating the intended awareness among students, researchers and industry professionals about emerging technologies for enhancing reliability and maintenance of engineering products, systems and processes. Proceedings of the workshop and feedback from participants amply suggest that the workshop indeed went a long way in igniting young minds and inspiring practicing professionals about the possibilities for research, development and upskilling using new technologies for reliability and maintenance of a wide array of systems in their respective areas of interests.  Importantly, opportunities for Industry-Academia collaboration towards this objective were also identified during in the course of the workshop.

Workshop Highlights

• The Past Present And Future Of Condition Monitoring Systems For Machines: A R Mohanty from IIT Kharagpur, who is an acclaimed expert in condition monitoring of industrial equipment and systems guided the participants through an absorbing journey of evolution of condition monitoring systems over the years as a maintenance and hence reliability enhancing tool. He thereafter went on to highlight new trends and future possibilities that can be pursued with specific details of hardware, methodologies and examples.  
• Latest Industrial Practices and Systems for Condition Monitoring, Trending, Diagnostic Equipment and Tools: SKF India Limited has done some pioneering work in the country in the field of modern condition monitoring using IOT and remote diagnostics and have successfully applied the same in several industries with encouraging results. Mr Vijay S Apte, General Manager, Application Engineering impressed upon the need for leveraging newer technologies such as IOT, AI and Data Analytics for furthering the reach of condition based and predictive maintenance practices in pursuit of maximising plant availabilities. Discussions on real instances and projects made his highly informative and interesting.
• Necessity Of Quantitative Reliability Evaluation For Engineering Systems:   Cher Ming Tan, Director Of Centre Of Reliability Sciences And Technologies, Chang Gung University Taiwan and an internationally renowned expert made a highly convincing case for predicting and remedying failures at design stage through modelling and analysing components and systems based on the underlying physics and physical phenomena. His emphasis of reliability as a science and physics of failure approach using multi skill software tools was supported by several case studies in his lucid presentation. In the second part of his talk, he dwelt on failures and failure prevention and recommended an approach which would be a judicious mix of statistics, physics and testing. He advocated a preference for sound statistical tools to AI and Fuzzy logic models.
• Lifecycle Reliability Aspects of Energy Systems: Alternate fuels will be increasingly sought after with the decline in the reserves of fossil fuels. Also, development of bio fuels as alternate fuels will be pursued whose success would usher a promising economic activity. Under such a scenario of use of bio fuels, design of heat engines will have to be revisited for reliability. Dr.Pradip Lingfa, from NERIST, Nirjuli described in detail sustained research in development of reliable and suitable bio fuels for heat engines which would favourably impact rural economy.
• Reliability of electrical transmission systems: Reliabi