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Reliability Assessment of Safety and Production Systems: Analysis,

Modelling, Calculations and Case Studies

Book · January 2021

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-64708-7

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 Jean-Pierre Signoret
Alain Leroy

Reliability Assessment of Safety and Produc-

tion Systems
Analysis, Modelling, Calculation and Case Studies
Jean-Pierre Signoret Alain Leroy
TOTAL Professeurs Associés
64160 Sedzère 93100 Montreuil
France France

Preface
In March 2019, two major accidents – the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8, and the oil spill off
the French coast after the container ship “Grande America” capsized – prompted the authors to finally undertake
the project they had long cherished: to pass on in a book to the younger generations their experience in the fields
of safety and dependability modelling!
Now retired, both have been working in reliability engineering since the seventies, when the subject was just
beginning to emerge as a new field of human knowledge. Together, they have spent over 70 years studying indus-
trial systems (modelling and probabilistic calculations), working in the research and development of methods and
tools, in reliability data collection and standardization works relating to industrial safety and dependability (in-
cluding such economic aspects as production availability). They also deliver courses in schools and universities
and are still members of several reliability societies.
For the past 50 years, they have been contributing to the ongoing development and improvement of the main
approaches proposed in this book. They have first-hand knowledge of the many challenges that have had to be
faced to achieve today’s state of the art. They also have hands-on experience of how the latter can be used to tackle
safety and dependability studies into simple or complex, small or large industrial systems, from a technological
point of view.
To share their extensive experience, the book adopts a triple objective of pedagogy, pragmatism and scientific
rigour. It sets out to bridge the gap between the theoretical aspects presented in academic works and the practical
approaches described in engineering books. Illustrations, explanations, examples and case studies are provided
throughout the book to give readers an in-depth grasp of how to achieve accurate and relevant studies and a full
understanding of the underlying assumptions, mathematics, and limitations.
This book aims to be useful for engineers, systems designers, standards developers, professors and students. It
is split into 6 parts:
Part 1 describes the background of reliability studies, explains how to handle such a study and defines the basic
core concepts. It overviews common cause failures (CCF), which are the prime potential weak points leading
to system failures. It highlights the two main aspects of technological risk – safety and dependability (e.g.
production availability) – and explains how to extend the scope of reliability studies to cover these topics.
Part 2 is devoted to the starting point of any study: risk identification and simple qualitative analyses. It describes
the inductive (bottom-up) approaches such as preliminary hazard analysis (PHA), hazard and operability study
(HAZOP) and failure mode, effects and criticality analysis (FMECA) designed to identify the impact of single
events on the system under study as a whole.
Part 3 broaches the step forward of modelling static systems. It describes reliability block diagrams (RBD) and
fault trees (FT) which share the same mathematical background (Boolean algebra). FTs are very important
because they represent the alternative deductive (top-down) approach. Qualitative as well as semi-quantitative
and quantitative analyses are presented for time-independent/-dependent and small/large systems. The applica-
tion of binary decision diagrams (BDD) is introduced, and the modelling of common cause failures (CCF),
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importance factors and uncertainty propagation is described. Extensions to sequential models like cause conse-
quence diagrams, event trees, LOPA (layer of protection analysis) or bowties, and also to dependent event
models such as belief networks are introduced. Their use in conjunction with Markov (FT-driven Markov mod-
els) or Petri nets (RBD-driven PNs) models is also covered. Related exercises are provided at the end of this
part, together with their solutions.
Part 4 takes another step forward, broaching dynamic systems and stochastic processes. It describes the Markov
and Petri nets approaches. Markov models are useful for defining basic core concepts (reliability/availabil-
ity/failure frequency/failure rate/failure intensities) but also to model multiphase and multistate (i.e. with more
than two states) systems. Petri nets are helpful for modelling interdependencies that cannot be modelled with
Boolean approaches, and probabilistic distributions, which cannot be modelled using Markov graphs. The
downside is that the analytical calculations have to be discarded and replaced by the Monte Carlo simulation,
which is also covered in this part. Related exercises are provided at the end of this part, together with their
solutions.
Part 5 is dedicated to the dilemma of industrial system designers, that of solving the opposition of safety vs. de-
pendability to design systems that will operate both safely (safety) and economically (dependability). These
two facets of the industrial risk – the production availability of production systems and the functional safety of
safety systems – are analysed in detail at the end of the book, as specific applications of the general subjects
developed in the first parts.
Part 6 rounds off the book with important topics relating to standardization by international bodies such as IEC or
ISO, feedback from the field, and reliability data collection.
As pointed out at the start, the book proposes only mature techniques drawn from the authors’ long experience
and which have proven to be enduringly effective in dealing with the technological risk. It does not broach such
other important and useful approaches as software reliability, the human factor or security, which are outside its
scope.

Acknowledgments
Such a project could not be carried out without the continuous support and involvement of some benevolent per-
sons and we wish to warmly thank them for the help they provided all along these past two years.
We specially want to thank Yves Dutuit (Professor Emeritus, University of Bordeaux), who performed thorough
reviews of all chapters to consolidate the theoretical matters and helped us to make the necessary trade-offs when
challenging questions arose. He also continuously stimulated us with relevant remarks. We wish to extend our
appreciative thanks to Odile Signoret (former technical English/French translator), who cautiously and compre-
hensively reviewed the text to correct and improve it, with occasional help from Jacquie Wade. The insights,
comments and suggestions of both of them provide an invaluable contribution to the content of this book.
We also want to thank our colleagues Stéphane Collas and Nicolas Clavé (from TOTAL), Cyrille Folleau and
Philippe Thomas (from SATODEV) who provided an effective help to handle the GRIF-Workshop software pack-
age used for probabilistic calculations throughout the book.
And lastly, we are very grateful to our families who have unfailingly supported us and accepted the side effects
and constraints of this work all the time.

Sedzere, France Jean-Pierre SIGNORET

Montreuil, France Alain Leroy

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