Reliability Society Newsletter

 

Vol. 58, No. 3. August 2012

President's Message



Reliability Society Members,

Hi. A lot of activity has transpired since my prior Newsletter message in May. My intent is to update you on our Society, and to ask you to connect with one or more of these activities, by contacting any of the AdCom members for participation, and for you to lend a helping hand. Here is the link to the RS homepage where you can easily find the AdCom members: http://rs.ieee.org/

We held our RS ExCom meeting on June 15 and our RS AdCom meeting on June 16. Thanks for each RS officer giving an information status and plans for their position area. We also held our RS Chapter Congress meeting on June 17. The RS Taipei /Tainan Chapter won the first RS Chapter Award for their great activities, the RS Dallas Chapter won the second Chapter Award, and the RS Boston Chapter won the third Chapter Award. The fourth Chapter Awards were presented to our RS Twin Cities, Japan, Cleveland, Denver, Italy, San Diego, and UK&RI Chapters. Thanks for each winning Chapter for turning in their Award report and winning an Award based on their very good activities and involvement.

The RS sponsored three annual conferences this summer:
  
  • The third annual 2012 Prognostics and System Health Management Conference was held on May 23-25 in Beijing, China. Chaired by a RS member Prof. Michael Pecht and organized by Beihang University and the China PHM Society, the conference attracted international experts and representatives from industry, academia, and government agencies. The conference was well attended. Thanks Mike.
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  • Our third annual RS IEEE International Conference on Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) (http://www.phmconf.org/) was held on June 18-21 at the Omni Interlocken Resort Hotel in Denver, Colorado. The conference had excellent presenters, had good breaks and lunches, and had two good social receptions, plus everyone got to meet or revisit with attendees. Overall, the attendees were very positive about the conference. Thanks to the Conference Management Committee (a number of RS Officers / AdCom members / RS members / others) for their great management and support.
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  • Our sixth annual Conference on Software Security and Reliability (SERE) (http://paris.utdallas.edu/sere12/) was held on June 20-22 at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) located in Gaithersburg, Maryland. This conference had very good presentations. The attendees were positive concerning the conference. Thanks to the Conference Management Committee (a number of software oriented RS Officers / AdCom members / RS members / others) for their great management and support.
    		•

    IEEE approved the PAR on March 29 for the PHM standard, titled: A Standard Framework for Prognostics and Health Management of Electronic Systems. During our IEEE PHM conference in Denver, we held the first working group meeting on June 19 for this standard development. The purpose of this standard is to classify and define the concepts involved in prognostics and health management of electronic systems, and to provide a standard framework that assists practitioners in the development of business cases, and the selection of approaches, methodologies, algorithms, condition monitoring equipment, and strategies for implementing prognostics for electronic systems. Sony Mathew is working closely with the PHM Standards Working Group on developing this standard. Please consider getting involved and if you have any questions or need clarifications, contact Sony (sonym@umd.edu).

    Jeff Voas (our RS Jr. Past President and present IEEE Division VI Director), Christian Hansen, our RS Treasurer, and I attended the IEEE TAB meeting held on June 29-30. All IEEE Society and Council Presidents and Division Directors attend and loads of reports are presented by IEEE Committee Chairs and Managers. Motions are presented, discussed by the TAB members, and voted upon. Very full schedules are held.

    The RS is organizing a new conference, The Reliability Science for Advanced Materials and Devices (RSAMD) (http://www.csmspace.com/events/rsamd/) will be held on February 24-25, 2013 at Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado

    Review the following established conferences, determine which ones are applicable to you, and plan to attend:
      
  • 2012 12th International Conference on Quality Software (QSIC 2012)
        August 27 - 29, 2012
        Xi'an, Shaanxi, China
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  • 2012 23rd European Symposium on Reliability of Electron Devices, Failure Physics and Analysis - ESREF 2012
        October 1 - 5, 2012
        Cagliari, Italy
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  • 2012 23rd IEEE International Symposium on Rapid System Prototyping (RSP)
        October 11 - 12, 2012
        Tampere, Finland
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  • 2012 IEEE International Integrated Reliability Workshop (IIRW)
        October 14 - 18, 2012
        South Lake Tahoe, CA, USA
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  • 2012 IEEE/CPMT TC-7 Workshop on Accelerated Stress Testing & Reliability (ASTR)
        October 17 - 19, 2012
        Toronto, ON, Canada
    		•
      
  • 2012 IEEE 23rd International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE)
        November 27 - 30, 2012
        Dallas, TX, USA
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  • Annual Reliability and Maintainability Symposium - RAMS 2013
        January 28-31, 2013
        Orlando, Florida, USA
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  • 2013 IEEE International Reliability Physics Symposium (IRPS)
        April 14 - 18, 2013
        Monterey, CA, USA
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    The following is my request to our RS members, please consider being involved at some level within your local RS Chapter, RS Conference Management Committees, RS ExCom Officer Committees, or Technical Committees (being a Chair or active member). It is also very great for our RS members to be an author for our RS publications or ATR (annual advanced technology report). Please consider.

    Thanks to each of you for your Reliability Society membership.




    Best regards,

    Dennis Hoffman
     2012 RS President

     

    From the Editor

    In this August issue of Reliability Society Newsletter, President Dennis Hoffman begins with congratulation messages to the chapters that received the RS Chapter Awards in the RS Chapter Congress meeting on June 17, and then summarizes the great success of RS sponsored conferences in the past few months since May. He also gave a brief introduction to IEEE Reliability Standard titled as 'A Standard Framework for Prognostics and Health Management of Electronic System'. There is a further update on the standard in the regular article section of this August issue. The President finishes the message with a list of upcoming conferences that are available for RS members to participate.

    In this issue, there are two feature articles and one regular article, followed by three book reviews. The first feature article "Security-less Technology in Your Pocket" by Dr. K. Miller and Dr. J. Voas stresses the security concerns of BYOD in work environment. The second feature article "The Elusive Definition of Requirements Completeness" by Luke Kasper and Dr. Phil Laplante elaborates the definitions of completeness that address the desirable quality of a system or software requirement specification (SRS) in IEEE standard 830. The regular article of this issue emphasizes the development status of the two new standards by IEEE-RS-SC. As for the book reviews, "Design for Reliability" is a must have book for R&D engineers and managers who wish to develop a low cost, but high performance product with minimum failure. "Importance Measures in Reliability, Risk, and Optimization: Principles and Applications" is the only book on the market that addresses important measures in reliability, risk, and optimization systematically. The last book, "Time Management for Department Chairs", is a practical book for any busy department chairs who wishes use the time more efficiently.

    The Newsletter has been the society's primary media for sharing thoughts on reliability related issues and announcements of events of interest to our members. This newsletter will publish content deemed appropriate for and of interest to members of the IEEE Reliability Society and members of the reliability profession in general. Accepted content includes announcements and reports of activities sponsored by the Reliability Society including chapter meetings, workshops and conferences. Technical papers including reviews, opinions, case studies or new ideas for the reliability professional are welcomed and accepted without external review. Authors are solely responsible for the correctness of results presented and proper citation of work by others. For submissions to Prognostic Health Management (PHM) section, please contact Dr. Pradeep Lall who is the editor handling the PHM section. For further information please contact Dr. Lall.

    Deadlines for submission of content:

    Nov. 10 (Issue No. 4/2012)
    Feb. 10 (Issue No. 1/2013)
    May 10 (Issue No. 2/2013)
    Aug. 10 (Issue No. 3/2013)

    I would like to thank the RS Officers, AdCom members, Chapter chairs and members at large who have contributed to this issue. I sincerely hope our members can continue sharing your thoughts through our newsletter.

    If you have any suggestions or comments on the newsletter, please feel free to contact me at your convenience.

    Sincerely,

    Shiuhpyng Winston Shieh, PhD
    Newsletter Editor-in-Chief

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    (c) 2012 IEEE Reliability Society