Content area
The development and delivery of a new course on Maintenance and Reliability Engineering (MRE), for seniors and first-year graduate students in engineering, is the focus of this paper. The objective of this course is to present the fundamentals of MRE and maintenance management. Students learn the principles of various maintenance technologies as they are currently practiced by U.S. industry. The course activities include lectures, laboratory experiments, field trips, and team-based projects that are selected from different engineering disciplines. Distance education modules, with direct teacher-student interaction, are being developed. This new educational activity augments and broadens students’ capability in problem solving, with an opportunity for their career enhancement.
The College of Engineering at The University of Tennessee established the Maintenance and Reliability Center (MRC) in 1996, with the vision of promoting education, research, information dissemination, and industry-academia networking in the field of maintenance and reliability engineering. This industry-sponsored Center provides a unique stepping stone through its certification program for engineering majors1. The estimated maintenance costs in all of the U.S. industry sectors exceeds $500 billion annually. Global competitiveness, product quality, and economics of manufacturing have increased the visibility of industrial maintenance organizations. A well-planned and efficiently managed maintenance activity, the implementation of condition-based maintenance techniques, and the integration of plant maintenance and operations would enhance the chances of achieving the mission set out by the industry management2, 3.
Introduction to Maintenance and Reliability Engineering is one of the four courses being developed as part of a National Science Foundation Combined Research Curriculum Development (NSF-CRCD) project4. The course provides both classroom and laboratory experience for seniors and first-year graduate students in engineering. The topics are developed in a modular form, consisting of text material, instructor material, problems, and quizzes. The following major topics have been developed:
• Overview of maintenance and reliability engineering. • Digital signal processing (DSP) and information extraction from machinery data.
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Details
Modular engineering;
Maintenance costs;
Digital signal processing;
Plant maintenance;
Engineering education;
Information retrieval;
Network reliability;
Component reliability;
Maintenance management;
Visibility;
Curricula;
Reliability engineering;
Distance learning;
Problem solving;
Students;
Colleges & universities;
Graduate students;
Laboratories;
Reliability;
Experiments;
College students;
Student teacher relationship;
Classroom communication;
Engineering;
Quizzes;
Competitiveness;
Certification;
Manufacturing;
Networking;
Competition;
Data processing;
Quality;
Extraction;
Signal processing;
Curriculum development;
Educational activities;
Machinery;
Lectures;
Dissemination;
Older people;
Classrooms;
Teacher education