A Brief Introduction:

I was born on January 23, 1943. I am an Electrical Engineering graduate of M.S. University of Baroda
of 1963. I also did my M.E in power System Engineering from University of Roorkee in 1966 and soon
I joined as lecturer in Electrical Engineering Department. I started my research work in Reliability
Engineering at IIT Roorkee ( formerly, known as University of Roorkee) and did my Ph.D. in Reliability
Engineering in 1970. Inspired by high quality and reliability of Japanese products at that time as I
believed that if Indian products were of international standard, India could become economically
and politically strong and self-reliant, which our PM Modiji is advocating now. I was selected as
Professor in the department of electrical engineering of University of Roorkee. In 1976, I approached
The Department of Science and Technology (DST) and persuaded the Secretary Dr. A Ramachandran
to set up "NCST working Group on Reliability Engineering in India", comprising representatives of
major industries, Indian Standard Bureau and Defence establishments, technical institutes and
research organisations.. We worked for two years 1976-1978 and eventually brought out two
reports, DST Secretary finally constituted a task force committee for implementation of the
recommendations of NCST reports in 1978 with DST Secretary as convener. As luck would have it the
Secretary changed in 1978 and Prof MGK Menon took over. He shelved the reports from
implementation. In his opinion , calibration should be given priority than reliability. It may be
important that Japanese Government was ready to establish a centre for quality /reliability in India
as a part of Indo –Japanese Joint commission. But Planning Commission did not approve of it on
inputs from DST. I tried my best but in vain. The new Secretary did not think it is time for reliability
recommendations to be implemented. Finally the reports got buried. The effort of two years was
lost forever.

Disappointed, I tried to persuade technical institutes to create reliability engineers, so that someday
the situation would change with reliability engineers joining various industries. Since Roorkee
University was a state University at that time and had three bosses ( State Govt., UGC and Union
Ministry), so I shifted to IIT Kharagpur in 1080, The first M.Tech course in Reliability Engineering was
started with MHRD grants of INR 12 Million at IIT Kharagpur in 1982 and a full-fledged Reliability
Engineering Centre was established in 1983. Side by side, I also started delivering popular lectures at
Industries and Govt. departments including defence establishments to popularise the concepts of
quality, reliability, safety. The M.Tech programme started in 1982 is still running at IIT Kharagpur as
M.Tech in Quality and Reliability engineering. In 2016, the Reliability Engineering Centre was
renamed as Subir Chaudhuri School of Quality and Reliability Engineering after an NRI graduate of
IIT Kharagpur who made some donation to IIT Kharagpur. In short, at leaast I have the satisfaction of
producing several hundred reliability engineers , who are working in several prestigious projects in
India and abroad. I also published two books on Reliability with Elsevier in 1992 and 1993, which
fetched excellent reviews from the international scientific community..

I also worked in Federal Republic of Germany at four different reputed institutions with well-known
professors. Under German Exchange programme, I worked at Technical University-Munich
(Professor Dr. R. Baumann’s institute: 1972-73). During this period he published 10 papers in a year
in reputed international journals and based on this work, I was invited to join, Laboratorium fur
Reaktoregelungen und Anlagensicherungen (GRS-Garching, near Munich)-an institute of 100
scientists and engineers, led by well-known Professor Dr. A. Birkhofer )on a Senior Humboldt
Fellowship during 1973-74. Here I was engaged in reliability design and risk assessment of nuclear
power plants. While working at GRS-Garching, I visualised the usefulness of Fuzzy Sets Theory in risk
assessment of nuclear energy plants where the statistical risk was often not fully accepted as
meaningful assurance to the public at large, in whose perception, perceived risk is always considered
higher than statistical risk. To pursue this concept, I joined Professor H.-.J. Zimmermann’s institute
(Professor Zimmermann is a world-renowned professor and researcher in Fuzzy Set Theory) during
1978-79 again on Senior Humboldt Fellowship to work in the area of application of fuzzy sets to risk
and reliability problems. Eventually, I was invited to work at Kernforschungszentrum (Reactor
Research Centre), Karlsruhe, Germany during 1987-88, as Guest Professor. While working at
Karlsruhe, I developed methodology to carry out Level-I Risk assessment studies of nuclear power
plants using Fuzzy Sets Theory and developed successfully a code thereof.
Subsequently, I realized that reliability alone is not sufficient as performance criteria. It should be
considered with environmental consequences of production as pollution due to intensive and mass
production is changing the world's environment, I joined National Environmental Engineering
Institute (1992-1994),Nagpur as Director-grade Scientist on deputation and I produced my book on
Clean production in 1996 ( see attached list of publications ( Attachment1). I also served as Director
of NERIST ( North Eastern Regional Institute of Science and Technology, Itanagar. Actually the
concept of Performability Engineering encompasses quality, reliability, maintainability, safety,
sustainability etc (Note1) . I also started an International Journal of Performability from Jaipur, India
in 2005, and served as its Editor-in-Chief for 11 years, after my retirement from IIT Kharagpur in
2005. I had settled at Jaipur after my retirement. Subsequently, in 2016, I sold the publication rights
of this international journal to a US publisher which is still publishing this journal.

This is in short my commitment to Environmental, performance and economic considerations of

clean production aimed at boosting the prosperity of the country. I am also attaching a chapter
from my Advanced Handbook on Performability Engineering published in 2021 by Springer. Unless
sustainability is considered, performance has no meaning. Govt has not found my commitment or
dedication suitable for any award. Now I am 80. Nevertheless, I strongly feel that performability
concept should be propagated in order to save the world from environmental disasters that are
being manifested by way of climatic changes world over. A Book Series on Performability
Engineering was also planned and is being published by Scrivener Publishing LLC, USA with a
strategic partnership with John Wiley & Sons, USA . I am serving as Series Editor of this series. I
strongly feel that Indian Government should advise technical institutes to start such a course in
technical institutes. I shall consider my life as rewarded if this is done

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