Keynote Speakers

Prof Uday Kumar is the Chair Professor of Operation and Maintenance Engineering and Director of Luleå Railway Research Center at Luleå University of Technology, SWEDEN. He has more than 30 years of experiences in research, consulting and finding solutions to industrial problems directly or indirectly related to reliability and maintenance of engineering systems. He has co-authored 8 books and edited several books and proceedings. He has published more than 350 papers in Journals and conference proceedings. He is also Editor in chief (Reliability and Maintenance) for International Journal of Engineering Management and Assurance and Area Editor (Europe) for Journal of Quality in Maintenance. He was awarded the Nordea Science Foundation Award for significant contribution to science, society, and region (2014). He is also recipient of Distinguished Alumnus Award of IIT BHU (2017). He is an elected member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA).

In recent years, technology has played a vital role in enhancing the management of risk and reliability in engineering assets, presenting both new opportunities and unforeseen challenges. The strategic focus the modern-day managers has been on seeking transformative technological and business solutions to ensure the safe and cost-effective operation of engineering assets. These transformative technologies such as industrial Internet of Things, AI, Machine Learning, and 5G communication, offer highly effective maintenance solutions, empowering engineering managers to make informed decisions while minimizing costs. As a result, asset managers have embraced digital technologies across their assets, aiming for operational excellence. However, the journey of digital transformation must address various challenges, such as technological, business, and governance-related issues etc., to ensure the safe, reliable and sustainable operation of engineering assets. The presentation underscores the significance of digital and enabling technologies, examines associated issues and challenges, and explores future trends. It highlights the potential of enabling technologies for estimation of the remaining useful life of engineering assets and implementing maintenance strategies considering contextual information.

Prof Michael Pecht (45,000+ citations, 95 H-Index) has a BS in Physics, an MS in Electrical Engineering and an MS and PhD in Engineering Mechanics from the University of Wisconsin. He is a Professional Engineer, an IEEE Fellow, a PHM Society Life Fellow, an ASME Fellow, an ASM Fellow, an SAE Fellow and an IMAPS Fellow. He served as editor-in-chief of ASME Open, IEEE Access, IEEE Transactions on Reliability, Microelectronics Reliability, and Circuit World. He is currently editor-in-chief of Elsevier’s ePrime Journal of Electrical Engineering, Electronic and Energy. He has also served on three U.S. National Academy of Science studies, two US Congressional investigations in automotive safety, and as an expert to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. He is the Director of CALCE (Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering) at the University of Maryland (UMd), which is funded by over 150 of the world’s leading electronics companies at more than US$6M/year. He is also a Professor in Applied Mathematics and also in Mechanical Engineering at UMd.  In 2008, he was awarded the highest reliability honour, the IEEE Reliability Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2010, he received the IEEE Exceptional Technical Achievement Award for his innovations in the area of AI-based prognostics and systems health management for electronics products.

Li-ion batteries are commercially successful power sources for a diverse range of applications. However, the characteristics of Li-ion batteries make them susceptible to both swelling and thermal runaway, resulting in failed products, and occasionally in fires and explosions. In some cases, defects in lithium batteries are not detected prior to use. For example, recently GM, Chysler, Hyundai and Stellantis had to recall their EVs due to defects in their batteries, which caused reliability issues and, in many cases, fires. In addition, there has been numerous fires of batteries in e-bikes, vaping devices, and consumer products. In other cases, some companies manufacture batteries with inadequate safety features or misrepresent the true nature of their battery by re-using, re-wrapping or counterfeiting batteries. This talk reviews the reliability and safety issues and mitigation strategies for Li-ion batteries.

Prof. P. K. Kapur is currently Director of Amity Center for Interdisciplinary Research, Amity University, Noida. He has been the Former Dean of the Faculty of Mathematical Sciences and Former Head of the Department of Operational Research, University of Delhi. His vast research experience in the areas of Software Reliability, Optimization, Innovation Diffusion Modeling in Marketing, and Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) as a tool for interdisciplinary research in Human Resource Development (HRD), Marketing of Brands, Big data projects adoption & other areas of management, is phenomenally illustrated through his work with over 42 PhD & 25 M.Phil scholars.

He is an author of two books titled, “Software Reliability Assessment with O.R. Applications”, Springer UK (2011) & "Contributions to Hardware and Software Reliability" (1999), World scientific, Singapore and editor-in-chief of International Journal of Systems Assurance Engineering and Management (IJSAEM) published by Springer. He is the series editor of book series Asset Analytics – Performance and Safety Management published by Springer. He has executed various research projects from UGC, DRDO in the areas of Software Reliability & Innovation Diffusion modeling. He has been the President of Society for Reliability Engineering, Quality and Operations Management (SREQOM) since 2000 and former President of Operational Research Society of India (ORSI). He has edited 7 volumes of Conference Proceedings and special issues of various international Journals. He has over 350 research papers publications in top international and national journals/proceedings of repute.

He has delivered several key-note addresses/invited talks in various prestigious International & National Conferences and has been invited to deliver lectures in International Universities in Sweden, Denmark, South Africa, Serbia etc. He has been recently awarded with the “Best Teacher in Operations Management” by Bloomberg & UTV & Lifetime Achievement Award for Global Leadership and Pioneering contributions to the field of Software Reliability Engineering, along with an Award “For His Dedicated Contributions to the development DQM Research Center” Serbia, June 2014.

Several software reliability growth models have been developed in the literature from different perspectives. Of late stochastic Differential Equation based models have also been developed. In this paper, we focus on Stochastic Differential Equation based models. There are mainly two kinds of models where detection rate is stochastic, and others are models where introduction rate is stochastic. They are fewer in number. In this paper we concentrate on the later type. Initially, we review them and develop a more general one and compare them with the existing one. Paper provides the state-of-the-art modeling in software reliability using SDE. Lastly, we show their interdisciplinary nature especially with technology/marketing management.

Modeling interdisciplinarity is very interesting and pave the wave for more general modeling. Several new models are particular cases of the model developed in this paper. Numerical results are also provided, and it is found that the new model is more accurate.

Dr Jezdimir Knezevic, Mirce, is a world class researcher, educator and entrepreneur. Over 500 publications disseminated world-wide through books, papers, monographs, and reports attributed to his name. In addition, he has delivered numerous technical presentations, keynote addresses and speeches; has been congress, conference, symposium chairman, track leader, workshop presenter, round table moderator on several hundred international events which took part in all six continents in over 40 countries. He has been elected as a Fellow, Member or Official of many leading Professional Societies and Institutions worldwide and has been actively involved in editorial work with the world’s leading and prestigious referred journals and publishing houses. Dr Knezevic has received several international awards for his contribution to research and education in the field of Logistics Engineering including the prestigious Armitage Medal (1993) and Eccles Medal ("In recognition of his outstanding achievements in the development of Logistics Education", 1996) from the Society of Logistics Engineers, SOLE,  in USA. In 2010 The Indian Society for Reliability Engineering, Quality and Operations Management awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award, to Dr Knezevic "for global leadership and pioneering research excellence in Mirce Mechanics".

Encouraged by the excellent response from industry to his research and educational activities, in 1988 Dr Knezevic established a self-financing Centre for Management of Industrial Reliability, Cost and Effectiveness (MIRCE), at Exeter University, UK. Together with his colleagues, he has developed and delivered over 100 vocational courses and 12 international summer schools for practitioners from industry. Under his leadership, the Centre has attracted over 3000 professional engineers and managers to training and educational Programmes generated an income over 3 million US dollars.

In 1991, Dr Knezevic developed and introduced the first Master of Science Degree in Logistics Engineering in the United Kingdom, at Exeter University. This was followed by the first Master Programme in Reliability and Maintainability Engineering, in 1996, and finally, in 1997 the first Master Programme in System Operational Effectiveness. Through these programmes he has directed and supervised around 200 postgraduate students, holding senior positions in leading global giants including Lockheed Martin, Rolls Royce, British Aerospace, Thomson Training & Simulation, GKN Westland Helicopters, Short Brothers, Martin- Baker, RACAL, United Defense, Kongsberg Defense, Alvis Vehicles (GKN Defence), EDS, Siemens Plessey, Lucas, Chelton Electro-Statics, Royal Air Force, NAMSA, South African Navy, Vickers, GEC Marconi, British Army, Yarrow Shipbuilders, Taiwan Air Force, Royal Norwegian Air Force, University of Singapore, Sentient Systems, Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering. In 1999 Dr Knezevic formulated the concept of MIRCE Science, whose development, dissemination and application required total commitment. Hence, for that purpose, he decided to resign from the Exeter University and founded the MIRCE Akademy, at the Woodbury Park, Exeter, UK. Under his leadership, MIRCE Science became recognized theory of the motion of an in-service system through MIRCE Space, used for determining actions and resources required for doing expected work. It consists of axioms, formulas, algorithms and computational methods that enable predictions of functionability performance to be done, well before they became statistics. The MIRCE Akademy has educated thousands of professionals coming from Industry, Government and Military Organisations world-wide. Some of them have received internationally recognised Master or Doctoral Diplomas.

Dr Knezevic holds Bachelor, Master and Doctoral Degrees from Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Belgrade, Yugoslavia. He shares life with Lynn, is passionate about motorsport, is challenged by the restoration of rusty, but beautiful Lancia rally cars, and enjoys living in a XVI century built thatched cottage in tranquil village of Bickleigh, Devon, England.

Recent developments of digital technologies, which enables immense amounts of information to be compressed on small storage devices that can be easily preserved and transported, have made fundamental changes to many aspects of human lives, including the creation of autonomous systems. Autonomous ships, trains, cars and similar systems operate independently of human interactions, by receiving inputs information from the range of physical sensors that are processed in accordance to establish algorithms. Most frequently used sensors to control autonomous functions, include global positioning system, inertial navigation system, optical and infra-red, light detection and ranging, radio detecting and ranging, microphones, including wind and pressure sensors. As the ability to continuously exchange information is essential for their functionality, these sensors are an integral part of a functionable system, as conceived by MIRCE Science. The research conducted and published have shown that space weather, in general, and solar storm, in particular, have been impacting reliability and safety of a large number of modern technological systems, like power networks, aviation, satellite services, radio communication and pipelines, as documented in the paper. Hence, the main objective of this paper is to show that solar storm could have similar impacts on in-service reliability and safety of all autonomous systems that are using digital technology for the provision of the operational autonomy. The lessons learned should be a “wake up call” to their designers as solar storm is as an active and constantly driving mechanism of their motion through MIRCE Space. Then and only then, accurate and meaningful reliability and safety predictions could be possible, enabling the achievement of the ultimate goal of increasing the probability of the prevention and protection of occurrence of undesirable consequences of naturally occurring solar storms on functionability performances of autonomous systems.

Mrs. Janaki Devi Kompella is the CEO and Original Founder of RELSAFE PRA Consulting Private Limited, a part of the Assystem Group - a multi-national organization leading in nuclear engineering, headquartered in France. RELSAFE is a technical consulting services company providing value added solutions globally in the niche area of Safety Assessment for the Nuclear industry. Devi is a PSA (Probabilistic Safety Assessment) specialist with wide ranging international experience and recognition in the nuclear industry in Europe & Asia. She established a long-standing working relationship with European clients, for whom RELSAFE works as preferred suppliers, led technical execution and management of diverse large volume safety projects (Full scope Integrated Level 1 and 2 PRA with Internal Events and various Hazards, SSC Safety Classification, Deterministic Safety Analyses etc.,) for utilities, regulators and technical support organizations in Switzerland, France, and Belgium with excellent project feedback. She has also provided technical advisory/ training to Japanese and Korean EPCs and utilities in Argentina and Sweden. Devi has been part of various programmes at IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) for development of international standards and guidelines and training; she had a distinguished long-term association with Swiss Nuclear Regulatory Authority (ENSI), Government of Switzerland for review of Swiss Safety Assessments. She is also a part of technical committees in well-known industry conferences such as American Nuclear Society Probabilistic Safety Assessment (ANS PSA) and Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Management (PSAM). Devi received ‘Outstanding Contribution Award’ from Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India, for development of the first comprehensive reference Level 1 and Level 2 PSA for Indian PHWRs while working at NPCIL, India. She has held the position of Global Nuclear Director at Lloyd’s Register for 5 years post her tenure at NPCIL and led large teams from India, Sweden, and UK. Under her leadership, RELSAFE is emerging as a technical excellence centre in nuclear safety consulting. With a high calibre, efficient team of 25 Indian engineers, RELSAFE is endeavoring to be the most trusted choice of global clients seeking effective technical solutions to enhance the safety and operational performance of their industrial installations.

Dr Vinod Mubayi did his BSc and MSc in Physics from Delhi University and his PhD in Physics from Brandeis University. He worked as a post-doctoral research associate in the Laboratory of Atomic and Solid-State Physics at Cornell University from 1967-69, as a Research Fellow at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai from 1969-74 and then joined Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) where he worked in the Department of Applied Science and the Department of Nuclear Science and Technology until retiring in December 2015. At BNL, he was Principal Investigator for many US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC) and US Department of Energy (USDOE) programs related to safety analyses of commercial nuclear power plants and nuclear research facilities with focus on severe accidents, consequences, integrated risk evaluation and regulatory cost-benefit analyses. He participated in USNRC programs on risk-informed regulation, evaluation of emergency response for advanced reactors, regulatory analysis of the siting of nuclear power plants, Level 2/3 PRA of low power and shutdown operation, risk from spent fuel pool accidents, and evaluation of compliance with Safety Goals. He was Coordinator, NRC International MACCS Code Users Group (1994-2004) and Chairman, NRC VICTORIA Code Peer Review Committee (1996-7). He was Team leader on risk assessment of the design of the MOX fuel facility, including a PSA of red oil explosions. He served as Adjudicator to the US NRC Office of Commission Appellate Adjudication on Nuclear Power Station License Renewal Programs. After retirement, Dr. Mubayi has continued as a Member, American Nuclear Society Standards Writing Group on the Level 3 PRA Standard. He is also a Reviewer for the journals Annals of Nuclear Energy and Nuclear Technology on papers related to severe accident source terms.

Probabilistic Safety/Risk Assessment (PSA/PRA) has been widely accepted as a technology for investigating the risks posed by the design, construction and operation of hazardous facilities such as nuclear power plants. The first part of this paper provides an overview of the standards for PRA/PSA of nuclear power plants (NPP) that have recently been adopted or are currently under development by the American Nuclear Society (ANS) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). These standards establish a set of technical requirements that need to be met in carrying out a plant PRA/PSA which can be used to support risk-informed decisions concerning plant design and operation. Since the commercial NPP in the US are light-water reactors (LWRs), the standards that have and are being developed are based on the three levels of PRA, Level 1 (core damage), Level 2 (accident releases) and Level 3 (consequences), conventionally used in LWRs to analyse severe accidents. The focus of this paper is the standard proposed for Level 3 PRA, probabilistic assessment of consequences including radiation dose and induced health effects to offsite populations, land contamination, and economic impacts. When combined with the release frequencies calculated in Level 1 and Level 2, the output of a Level 3 PRA is used to estimate the plant risk from severe accidents, in particular the individual risks of early fatality and latent cancer fatality that are then compared to the quantitative health objectives (QHOs) of the Safety Goals established by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC). The second part of the paper is devoted to a discussion of the coverage of plant risk provided by the QHOs of the current USNRC safety goals. The QHOs establish risk limits for severe accidents in terms of their radiological consequences to affected individuals: in particular, the average individual health risks of early fatality and latent cancers from radiation exposure of members of the public living in the vicinity of a nuclear power plant. However, the experience of severe NPP accidents such as at Fukushima suggest that there are significant societal consequences besides the individual health risks of radiation exposure. These societal consequences include the potential relocation of large numbers of people for long periods of time, non-radiological health impacts of emergency measures like evacuation, significant property damage and community disruption, along with the substantial costs of recovery and decontamination. Based on related earlier work, it is argued that a safety goal for societal risk also needs to be considered and possibilities of such a goal along with an associated quantitative objective are discussed.

Education 2010, Indian institute of Technology Delhi (IIT Delhi), India
PhD, Mechanical Engineering 2005, Government Engineering College Ujjain, Ujjain India
ME, Industrial Engineering and Management. 2002, Govt. Engineering College Bilaspur, Bilaspur, India; BE, Mech. Engg.;

His work experience is as follows:
February 17, 2022 onwards, IIT Indore, India, Professor, Discipline of Mechanical Engineering.
January 12, 2017-February 16, 2022, IIT Indore, India; Associate Professor, Discipline of Mechanical Engineering. September 19, 2011-January 11, 2017, IIT Indore, India
Assistant Professor, Discipline of Mechanical Engineering. March 2010-September 2011, General Electric (GE), Bengaluru, India
Research Engineer, Global Research Center (JFWTC)
2005-2006, DRDO, Agra, India
Junior Research Fellow, ADRDE

Other
▪ Project Director, IIT DRISHTI CPS Foundation since 26 September 2021.
▪ Coordinator, Industry Academia Consortium on Smart Manufacturing (IndAC-SM).
▪ Co-founder and Non-executive Director, Techwarium India Pvt. Ltd.
▪ Member, Smart Manufacturing Council of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), 2020- 2021 and 2021-2022.
▪ Organizing Chair, International Conference on Precision, Meso, Micro & Nano Engineering (COPEN-11), December 12-14, 2019, IIT Indore.
▪ Associate Dean Research and Development, IIT Indore, 2015-2018.
▪ Chief Warden, IIT Indore Hostel, 2011-2012.
▪ Convener Institute Safety and Security Committee, IIT Indore, 2019 onwards.
▪ Team member, Impacting Research Innovation and Technology (IMPRINT) India Initiative, Ministry of Education (formally known as MHRD), Govt. of India.
▪ Organizing Secretary for 2nd International conference on Intelligent Robotics. Automation & Manufacturing, 16-18, December 2013, IIT Indore. Awards, fellowships, and other

Recognition:
▪ Distinguished International Associate (DIA) award, Royal Academy of Engineering, London, 2021.
▪ Hamied-Cambridge Visiting Lecture fellowship, University of Cambridge, International Strategy Office, Cambridge, UK, 2016.
▪ Newton Prize 2017 (Runner-up position), Royal Academy of Engineering, London, UK. ▪ Best Technology Development Award of IIT Indore, 2018 (team award).
▪ Invited talk at Visiting Professors Annual Conference of Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE), 25-27 September 2017 at Birmingham, UK. ▪ MHRD (now MoE) Fellowship for ME (2003-2005) and PhD (2006-2010). ▪ University Gold Medal for Master of Engineering (ME), RGPV Bhopal, 2005.

His Research focus has been:
▪ Smart Manufacturing-Digital twin, decentralized decision making. ▪ Reliability Engineering
▪ Prognostics

Grants and projects
▪ Cloud based shop floor simulation and reliability estimation tool (2022-2023, ₹10,00,000)- IITI DIRHSTI CPS Foundation (PI)
▪ Industry-Academia Consortium for Digitization in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) (2019-2022, £50,000)-Royal Academy of Engineering, London, (PI)
▪ Digital twin development for torqueing application, (2020-2021, ₹330,400)- John Deere, India, (PI)
▪ Investigating various aspects for Smart Manufacturing (2020 Onwards, ₹2,100,000)- Flavorite Technologies Pvt. Ltd, India, under CSR program, (PI)
▪ Building capacity in collaborative research for advanced manufacturing (2016-2018, £50,000)-Royal Academy of Engineering, London, (PI)
▪ Investigation and modelling of the relationships among cutting tool wear, product quality and operating conditions based on online condition monitoring (2015-2028, ₹19,02,652)- Science and Engineering Research Board, India, (PI)
▪ A short course on Reliability Engineering and Asset Management (2018, $8000), Under the aegis of Global Initiative of Academic Networks (GIAN) MHRD, Government of India, (course coordinator)
▪ Center of Excellence in Gear Engineering, (2015-2021, ₹2,80,00,000)- Department of Science and Technology, India, (member)
▪ Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Centre (2014-2019, ₹ 4,530,000)- Department of Science and Technology, India, (Co-I)
▪ CSIR foreign partial financial assistance to attend and present paper at 9th international conference on industrial engineering and operations management, Thailand, (2019, ₹30,000), CSIR, India, (PI)

He has guided 10 PhD thesis and has 5 patents in the area of reliability and operations.

The adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies by industries will have a significant impact on the management of Reliability, Availability, Maintainability, and Safety (RAMS) through the integration of Digital Twins (DT). This integration will bring about a transformation in operational efficiency, reliability, and safety across diverse sectors. Due to its real-time synchronisation, secure connectivity, and advanced capabilities for analytics and simulations, DT has the potential to greatly transform the field of reliability engineering and maintenance management. RAMS plays a crucial role in influencing decisions related to the procurement, commissioning, maintenance, life extensions, productivity, and decommissioning of engineered assets throughout their lifecycle. The manifestation and integration of DT into different RAMS practises is anticipated to cause disruption to their operational processes. During the design and testing phase of the asset, it is anticipated that DT will utilise the potential of simulations to significantly impact traditional approaches to reliability design and testing. The utilisation phase is anticipated to be significantly impacted by DT-driven analytical models, as they harness the potential of AR-VR-XR in maintenance assistance. These models possess the ability to communicate and incorporate technologies such as transfer or collaborative learning, thereby contributing to the emerging applications of predictive maintenance. With the capability of DT to make the decision at distributed levels and in a decentralized manner, the organizations will be able to make critical decision making in near real-time, making the systems much more resilient. The advancement of DT architectures enables systems to securely utilise several third-party apps for the execution of critical operations such as FTA, FMECA, RCM, and others. By effectively incorporating human reliability models, the integration of these assets offered by DT will elevate the degree of human-machine interactions. This paper initially presents a birds-eye view of the potential disruption that DT would cause to existing RAMS, and later digs deeper into some of the research-backed technological advancements for effective and efficient application of DT in the journey to make the asset smarter as well as more reliable. Although digital twins present numerous promising opportunities, there exist several challenges that must be overcome in order to realize their potential fully. The primary challenges encompass resource scarcity, the development and implementation of sensor technology, ensuring network security, and fostering cultural acceptance. This paper discusses some of the challenges. Furthermore, in this paper, some of the application domains are explored where such DT-enabled intelligent assets will make a severe difference to the existing way of operations.

Enrico Zio received the MSc degree in nuclear engineering from Politecnico di Milano in 1991 and in mechanical engineering from UCLA in 1995, and the Ph.D. degree in nuclear engineering from Politecnico di Milano and in probabilistic risk assessment at MIT in 1996 and 1998, respectively. He is currently full professor at the Centre for research on Risk and Crises (CRC) of Ecole de Mines, Paris, PSL University, France, full professor and President of the Alumni Association at Politecnico di Milano, Italy, distinguished guest professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, adjunct professor at City University of Hong Kong, Beihang University and Wuhan University, China and Co-Director of the Center for Reliability and Safety of Critical Infrastructures (CRESCI) and the sino-french laboratory of Risk Science and Engineering (RISE), at Beihang University, Beijing, China. 

He is IEEE and Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer. 
In 2020, he has been awarded the prestigious Humboldt Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany (https://www.humboldt-foundation.de/web/home.html), one the world's most prestigious research awards across all scientific disciplines. The Award is given to outstandingly qualified researchers and future leaders from science-related fields (but very seldom awarded to engineers!). The Award is granted in recognition of a researcher's entire achievements to date, to academics whose fundamental discoveries, new theories, or insights have had a significant impact on their own discipline and who are expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements in the future. Professor Zio has been selected for the Award in light of being a World leading scientist in Risk and Resilience Assessment, Safety Analysis and Reliability Engineering of complex systems and infrastructures, in particular for energy applications. He has been one of the pioneers in using artificial intelligence (such as neural networks) and genetic algorithms in reliability engineering and risk assessment, solving key problems related to the safety and reliability of critical systems such as those used in the nuclear, oil and gas, transportation industries. He has promoted the use of computational modeling within various international initiatives. His Google Scholar H-index is 93 and he is in the top 2% of the World scientists, according to Stanford ranking. 

In 2021, he has been appointed as:
Member of the Board Committee of the International Joint Research Center for Resilient Infrastructure (ICRI) 4TU. Resilience Ambassador by the 4TU Centre for Resilience Engineering and its backbone – the 4TU- programme DeSIRE (Designing Systems for informed Resilience Engineering), a strategic capacity building research programme of the four Dutch Technical Universities 

Fellow of the of the Prognostics & Health Management Society a world recognized scientist in the area of reliability cantered, condition based and predictive maintenance. 

In 2023, he has been appointed as Scientific Director of Research and Development of Datrix AI Solutions group. 

His research focuses on the modelling of the failure-repair-maintenance behaviour of components and complex systems, for the analysis of their reliability, maintainability, prognostics, safety, vulnerability, resilience and security characteristics, and on the development and use of Monte Carlo simulation methods, artificial intelligence techniques and optimization heuristics. He is author and co-author of seven books and more than 500 papers on international journals, Chairman and Co-Chairman of several international Conferences, associate editor of several international journals and referee of more than 20.

Risk can be complex to assess and manage. Scenarios must be imagined and postulated, and evaluations must be performed in the presence of uncertainties, possibly very deep. The outcomes of the evaluations inform decisions to prevent undesired events and, were they to occur, mitigate and recover from their consequences. On the other hand, in this world in continuous transition to meet the numerous and increasingly challenging objectives of efficiency, sustainability etc., the innovations that are being developed for better-being and more benefits for all, also deepen uncertainty related to new and unknown hazards and dangers. This calls for innovative methods of analysis, assessment and management of risk for enhanced safety. In this lecture, directions of development are presented, including the use of simulation for accident scenario identification and exploration, the exploitation of monitoring data for the dynamic updating of risk assessment to condition monitoring-based risk assessment, and the extension of the framework of analysis and assessment to resilience.

Pierre Dersin graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering after receiving a Master’s degree in Operations Research also from MIT. He also holds math & E.E. degrees from Université Libre de Bruxelles ( Belgium). Since 2019, he has been Adjunct Professor at Luleå University of Technology (Sweden) in the Operations & Maintenance Engineering Division. In January 2022, he founded a small consulting company, Eumetry sas, in Louveciennes, France, in the fields of RAMS, PHM and AI, just after retiring from ALSTOM where he had spent more than 30 years. With Alstom, he was RAM ( Reliability-Availability-Maintainability) Director from 2007 to 2021 and founded the “RAM Center of Excellence”. In 2015, he launched the predictive maintenance activity and became PHM (Prognostics & Health Management) Director of ALSTOM Digital Mobility, St-Ouen, France. Prior to joining Alstom, he worked in the USA on the reliability of large electric power networks, and on fault detection and diagnostics in industrial systems. He has contributed a number of communications and publications in scientific conferences and journals in the fields of RAMS, PHM, AI, automatic control and electric power systems, including Engineering Applications of AI, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, IEEE Transactions on Power Apparatus & Systems, ESREL, RAMS Symposia, French Lambda-Mu Symposia, the 2012 IEEE-PHM Conference , WSC 2013, and the 2014 European Conference of the PHM Society ( keynote speaker). In 2020 he received the Alan O. Plait award for best tutorial at the Reliability & Availability Symposium (“Designing for Availability in Systems, and Systems of Systems”).

He is the author of the book “ Modeling Remaining Useful Life Dynamics in Reliability Engineering” , CRC Press, June 2023.

Reliability of complex equipment and systems and efficient asset management have become major challenges for the economy, sustainability, and safety of today’s advanced societies. Previously, traditional methods relied on static reliability predictions based on scarce data and fixed maintenance plans. These methods suffer limitations in complex and dynamic environments. The digital transformation has now made it possible to evolve towards dynamic methods that exploit increasingly abundant data to update reliability predictions and support maintenance decisions based on asset condition.

This evolution is enabled by
(i) connectivity and communication (the ‘Internet of Things’),
(ii) affordable powerful hardware for parallel computing (such as Graphics Processing Units, GPU) and
(iii) advanced algorithms.

Here, we shall focus on how artificial intelligence (AI), and more particularly machine learning (ML), can be harnessed to enhance the effectiveness of reliability engineering and to progress towards system operation and maintenance optimization.

Without being exhaustive, the following techniques will be described and illustrated by examples:

• Deep survival methods, i.e. the use of deep learning to estimate survival functions;
• Transfer learning, to transfer knowledge from a source domain to a target domain (for instance from observations made in accelerated life tests to the operational environment);
• Combination of physics knowledge with data-driven approaches, using digital twins for instance.
• The management of prediction uncertainty, for instance in remaining useful life (RUL), which is essential for risk-based decision-making.

AI methods can and should be combined with traditional reliability engineering methods. For instance, recent work has shown that a reliability function can be seen as the outcome of a ‘time transformation”, and the latter could be identified through machine learning methods.

A conceptual model will be presented for dynamic risk-based predictive maintenance, whereby maintenance decisions are constantly updated based on data acquired by sensors to minimize maintenance costs and failure risks.

Finally, some of the challenges raised by AI/ML methods in industrial context will be highlighted.

Aleksandar JOVANOVIC: director of the Steinbeis EU-VRi European Risk and Resilience Institute in Stuttgart, Germany providing expertise in the areas of risk assessment and risk management for industry and public sector and CEO of the European Virtual Institute for Integrated Risk Management (EU-VRi). He is a full professor at Steinbeis University and Associate Member of ETH Zürich, Switzerland. his previous academic and research assignments include Politecnico di Milano (Italy), University of Stuttgart (Germany), Ecole Polytechnique (France), University of Tokyo (Japan), University of California La Jolla (USA), Beijing Capital University (China), the European Commission (Belgium, Italy), Argonne Ntl. Lab. (USA), and Risk Center of ETH Zürich, Switzerland, as well as work in/for industry. In his professional experience he has acted as project manager of over 150 large international/multinational projects in the area innovation management, new technologies, risk management, advanced data analysis and data mining, and related areas (the project for the EU, national governments, industry, utilities, insurances companies, R&D and academia). Main topics covered by the current projects deal with risk and resilience management in industry (e.g. for insurance, power, process) and include HSSE (Health, Safety, Security, Environment), RCM (Reliability Centered Maintenance), RBI (Risk-Based Inspection), KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), RCFA (Root Cause Failure analysis), resilience indicators and application of AI (artificial intelligence), in projects managed by him. As a risk practitioner, A. Jovanovic has contributed to the global risk community by a number of actions, such as convener of the national, European and ISO standards: CEN-CWA 15740:2008 (“RBI”), EN16991:2018 (“RBI”) and CEN-CWA 16449:2013 (“Management on New Technologies Related Risks”), currently acting as convener for ISO 31050 (“Management of emerging risks for enhanced resilience”), under publishing, and DIN-SPEC 91461:2022 (“Framework for stress testing resilience of industrial plants and sites (critical entities) exposed to cyber-physical attacks”). He is a coauthor of the milestone study on Future Global Shocks of the OECD (2013), author of 7 books and over 150 publications. He speaks fluently French, Italian, English, German and Serbia

Dr. Gopi Chattopadhyay, Ph.D. (Operations Management, University of Queensland, Australia), B.E (Mechanical, Gold Medallis, India), M.E(Industrial Engineering, Gold Medallist, India), MBA (Operations Management, Silver Medallist, India) has 40 years of experience in industries and Universities in operations, projects, maintenance, reliability and asset management. He is Postgraduate Programme Coordinator for Maintenance and Reliability Engineering (MRE) in Federation University Australia (FedUni). These programmes have been running since 1980s and over 300, managers and engineers from reputed global companies including water sector, mining and gas, electricity, transport, manufacturing, Australian defence, and navy enroll in MRE courses every year. He has expertise in cost and risk modeleling and enhancing performance.

He was Professor of Strategic asset management, Director Postgrad Studies and Head of Engg. Postgrad Programmes in Central Qld University (CQU) and Head of Engineering Management programmes in Qld University of Technology, (QUT), Australia. He Co-created the Engineering Management postgraduate degree at QUT, Asset Management in Power Generation Degree and futher enhanced Maintenance Management degree in CQU and he further enhanced MRE programmes in FedUni. He taught broadly across mechanical, maintenance, reliability engg., asset management, projects and operations management in onshore and offshore programmes of Central Qld. Uni, Qld. Univ. of Tech., University of Indonesia, Shanghai JT Uni, University of Natural Resourses and Environment (UNRE), PNG, Crossfield, Singapore, Lulea University of Technology (LTU), Sweden., Univ. of Qld, IIT Kharagpur and Calcutta University, India. Gopi supervised 20 PhD and Master research students to successful completion, secured over 2.5 Million Australian dollars of funding for industry based research and published over 200 international journal and conference papers.

He was Principal Consultant in Asset Management, Cardno, Australia and Senior Manager IBP Balmer Lawrie(I) in operations and developments. He is current Chair of Asset Management Council (AMC) Australia, a technical society of Engineers Australia, Gippsland and International Chair of Asset Management Society India (AMSI). He was past Chairs of Brisbane and Gladstone of Asset Management Council (AMC) Australia, past President of Australian Society for Operations Research (ASOR, Qld) and Vice President of Maintenance Engineering Society of Australia (MESA, Qld), industry reviewer of ISO55000 series of standards on Asset Management, Total Asset Management Plan of Queensland Government and reviewer of Asset Management Landsca document fo Global frum on Maintenance and Asset Management (GFMAM). Gopi is Chair of International Conference on Maintenance and Intelligent Asset Management (ICMIAM, 2020-2023).

An asset in line with ISO55000 is any item, thing, or entity that has potential or actual value to an organisation and communities.

Good asset management helps in retaining value of and realisation value from assets over its entire life cycle through further enhancing reliability, availability, maintainability, safety, and security.

This session will cover how asset management is able to support business in reducing cost and risks and enhancing performance through risk informed decision making.

Dr. Anirudh Gautam is a mechanical and electrical engineer from prestigious SCRA scheme of Indian Railways. He has served initial years on the Indian Railways in the maintenance of the carriage and wagon, maintenance and operation of steam locomotives, operation and maintenance of diesel locomotives and train and crew management in the challenging Eastern Railways of Indian Railways. He then worked in the area of manufacture of diesel locomotives at Diesel Locomotive Works, Varanasi and moved to the niche area of design and development of diesel engines for the locomotives. He is credited with design of the first hotel load feature on an export locomotive and was instrumental in building the first indigenous EMD design locomotive in India at DLW. He has developed the world’s first ALCO locomotive electronic fuel injection system which has been commercially successful. He developed the mobile Emission Test Car which has been used for measuring pollutants levels from diesel locomotives of Indian Railways. His thesis work at IIT Kanpur on biodiesel led to introduction of B10 blends on all diesel locomotives of Indian Railways. He has been working on the research and development of alternate and advanced propulsion systems. His main areas of interest are energy production devices, fuel cells, hybrid power trains and sustainable motive power systems, control systems development, structures optimization and rail wheel dynamics. His other area of specialization is Reliability Engineering and Prognostics Health Management, and he has been instrumental in setting up a Center for Reliability and Integrated Systems Engineering at RDSO.

Dr. Gautam is recipient of various awards by the Ministry of Railways, including the coveted National Award for Outstanding service by the Minister of Railways. He is working on many projects related to Indian Railways, like developing fuel-cell based hybrid trainsets which is the future of railway traction. He is involved in starting a Global program on RAMS and PHM at GBU Noida and a CoE on RAMS and PHM at IIT Kanpur. He holds a Masters in Quality management from BITS Pilani, a Masters of Engineering in Engine Systems from University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA, and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Kanpur. He is an Adjunct professor at IIT Kanpur in Electrical Engineering Department.

Indian Railways has a large inventory of assets, which includes, 1.15 lakh Km of railway tracks, 1,33,160 bridges, out of which 720 are important, 10,828 are major and 1,21,612 are minor bridges, 7349 railway stations, about 1 lakh signal posts, 50,000 Km of optic fiber lines, 3.5 lakh freight wagons, 80,000 passenger coaches, 15,000 locomotives, 80% electrified routes, etc. Moving assets are called rolling stock and the fixed assets come under the category of infrastructure. Traditionally Indian Railways has followed preventive or scheduled maintenance for its rolling stock and fixed assets. This system of maintenance served well when the speeds were low, axle loads were low and the number of trains running on the system were less. In earlier times, technology of the assets was generally simple with limited electronics and microprocessors. As Indian Railways moved to higher speeds and loads use of electronically controlled systems became a necessity. Thus more and more electronics and sophisticated technologies were embedded in the assets. With these developments, preventive system of maintenance and manual inspections were found to be insufficient. Increased speeds, loads and the number of trains necessitated induction of sophisticated technologies and it was felt to switch over to a suitable system of condition monitoring and maintenance to ensure the safety of operations. Indian Railways has taken up a pilot project for implementation of RAMS and PHM framework for its rolling stock and switch over to condition-based maintenance. This paper discusses the steps involved in the above transition and the precautions to be taken to move towards condition-based maintenance.

Professor Pradip Kumar Ray, presently Emeritus Professor, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) and Adviser, Vinod Gupta School of Management (VGSoM) , Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, received his PhD (in 1991 in the field of Productivity Engineering and Management of Manufacturing and Service Functions) and MTech (IE & OR) (in 1981) degrees from IIT Kharagpur, and Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering (in 1979) degree from IIEST Shibpur, India. Professor Ray with more than forty two years of diversified experience – eight years at General Electric Company of India and more than thirty four years of teaching and research experience at IIT Kharagpur- has also served as Visiting Professor and Investigator at a number of universities abroad, like Eastern Mediterranean University, Cyprus; USF, Tampa, USA; CQU, Gladstone, Australia; PNGUNRE, PNG; USP, Fiji, Aston University, Birmingham, UK, etc and trained in Japan on Production Management/JIT-based Manufacturing.

He has published one text book titled ‘Product and Process Design for Quality Economy and Reliability’, three edited books by Springer, 22 book chapters, 6 lecture packages, and 166 papers in international and national journals of repute and conferences in the areas of healthcare management, environmental management, productivity measurement and evaluation, quality design and control, TQM, process optimization, ergonomics/human factors engineering, safety engineering and management and other related topics. His areas of interest and research include productivity modelling, quality engineering, ergonomics/human factors engineering, safety engineering, engineering asset management and JIT-based/lean engineering operations management. With substantial number of industry and research grants to his credit, Prof Ray has supervised 19 PhD scholars with 3 research students currently working in Health Care System Optimization, Blood Bank Supply and Inventory Control, Service Performance Modelling, and Ergonomic Design of Products and Processes, and more than 145 MTech and 96 B-Tech projects, coordinated several outreach training programmes and courses for industries and academic institutions on several topics of his interest (till date 68), including Ministry of Education, Government of India-sponsored GIAN courses on Engineering Asset Management, Ergonomics/HFE, Production and Operations Management, Quality Engineering in Products and Processes, Environmental Performance of Manufacturing Systems: Modelling and Application; and Sustainable Production Management: Concepts and Practices; and other courses on SPC, TQM, Six Sigma, JIT/Lean Engineering, Materials Management, Environment Management, Workplace Stress Management and Ergonomics and long-duration training programme on Industrial Safety Engineering, and Safety Competence Building (SCB) in Material Handling for Tata Steel. He acted as an investigator in two-year duration UKIERI-sponsored project on ‘ Climate Change Issues and Environmental Performance of SMEs in India and the UK’ in collaboration with Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham, UK; and as a Chief Expert guiding APO-sponsored project on ‘Research on Institutions Offering Productivity Courses’ for six Asian countries. He acted, as the Principal Investigator, in OFB-sponsored project on ‘Manufacture of Shells for Field Guns with Improved Design and Performance’ under IMPRINT scheme of MoE, Government of India. Currently, he has acted, as Principal Investigator in the projects on (i) Design and Development of Automated Systems for Ergonomic Evaluation of Human-Product Interface in Healthcare Systems under SPARC scheme of Government of India in collaboration with Purdue University, USA; and (ii) Design and Development of Masters Programme on Circular Economy under Going Global scheme, sponsored by British Council in collaboration with Aston University, Birmingham, UK. He organized the international conference, MESH-2016, in December 2016 at IIT Kharagpur and attended several international conferences and congresses as a keynote speaker and a session chair. Under NPTEL on-line certification course, currently he offers four 12-week 30-hour duration courses on ‘Quality Design and Control’, ‘Management of Inventory Systems’, ‘Automation in Production Systems and Management’ and ‘Human Factors Engineering’ for UG, PG and PhD students and industry professionals.

A former Head of ISE department and Dean of VGSoM of IIT Kharagpur, Professor Ray is a certified Lead Assessor for ISO-9001 registration, and actively involved in a number of industrial consulting and research projects (31 such projects till date) in his interest areas. He is a member of several professional bodies, such as INFORMS and IIMM, and a Fellow of World Academy of Productivity Sciences (WAPS) and a Fellow of Institution of Engineers (India). He is a recipient of prestigious P C Mahalanobis Award of Operational Research Society of India (ORSI) for his outstanding contribution in the field of Engineering in the year 2018, and APO National Award for Productivity Technical Expert in the year 2022.

In today’s highly competitive globalization-induced industrial and business scenario, development of products, processes, and systems in any organization needs to comply with requirements of designing interfaces between humans and products and/or processes with consideration of potential, capability and limitations of humans engaged in working with skills-, rules-, and knowledge-based or combination jobs. Such a development using human factors engineering principles helps establish a performance assurance system in an organization resulting in both convenient methods of working and comfortable and safe work environment for humans, and sustainable performance of work systems in organizations. With an ability to meet such a challenge by addressing all problems, an organization, irrespective of its size and product-and process-mix, may be able to transform itself into a benchmarked one of international repute. In this talk, a number of human-factors engineering-based approaches with their application and the-state-of-the-art tools, techniques, and technologies to be used for ensuring sustainable performance for an organization are discussed. Both national and international scenarios related to issues and challenges being encountered by organizations with case examples are presented in the lecture.

Dr. Diego Galar is a Full Professor of Condition Monitoring in the Division of Operation and Maintenance Engineering at LTU, Luleå University of Technology. He has led coordination efforts for numerous European projects, covering a wide range of topics such as cyber-physical systems, Industry 4.0, IoT, and Industrial AI and Big Data. Dr. Galar has also been actively engaged in projects with the Swedish industry and those funded by Swedish national agencies like Vinnova.

In addition to his academic role, he serves as the Chief Technology Officer at TSI (Spain), a company specializing in predictive maintenance solutions and condition monitoring for critical defense, marine, and energy assets. He previously worked as the principal researcher at Tecnalia (Spain), where he led the Maintenance and Reliability research group within the Division of Industry and Transport. He also held the Volvo chair as a Professor at Skovde University.

Dr. Galar has an extensive publication record, including over five hundred journal and conference papers, books, and technical reports in the field of maintenance. He actively contributes to the academic community by serving on editorial boards, participating in scientific committees, and chairing international journals and conferences. He is also involved in national and international committees for standardization and R&D in the areas of reliability and maintenance.

Internationally, Dr. Galar has held visiting professorships at institutions such as the Polytechnic of Braganza (Portugal), University of Valencia, NIU (USA), and the Universidad Pontificia Católica de Chile. Currently, he continues to serve as a visiting professor at the University of Sunderland (UK), University of Maryland (USA), and Chongqing University in China.

Shri. Sameer Hajela, a graduate in mechanical engineering, is associated with safety analysis and safety studies of Nuclear Power Plants. His expertise covers safety analysis, accident management, safety review and safety assessment. As a utility representative, he is also involved in preparation and review of Regulatory Codes and Guides. He is associated with the Convention on Nuclear Safety (CNS) Peer Review and has been member of the Indian delegation in the Review Meetings of the Convention.

His salient contributions include conceptualization and preparation of Accident Management Program (AMP) for Indian PHWRs and conceptualization, design and implementation of Symptom-based Event Handling Scheme for PHWRs.

Shri. Hajela heads the Directorate of Reactor Safety & Analysis at NPCIL as Executive Director (RS&A) and is responsible for deterministic safety analysis and probabilistic safety assessment of PHWR based NPPs and also heads the Internal Safety Review Committees of NPCIL.

The main objective of Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) safety is to ensure and demonstrate that safety is met at all states of the reactor operation and the related risks from nuclear power plant to plant personnel, public and environment are acceptably low. The safety philosophy is based on deterministic approach, which includes various layers in line with defence-in-depth principle. To complement the traditional deterministic approach, use of Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) methodology is gaining importance as a tool for Risk Informed Decision Making (RIDM). PSA is a standard tool in safety evaluation of NPPs. It provides a useful, consistent and structured framework for safety evaluation. It is an integrated model addressing overall safety of the plant. It puts the safety issues in perspective and helps in taking safety related decisions considering design, operations and maintenance characteristics.

At NPCIL, areas where PSA supports deterministic approach, include, events categorization using Defense In Depth, development of the symptom based event handling and Severe Accident Management Guidelines (SAMG).

Inline with these applications of PSA, it also gives Point-in-time risk by the Risk Monitor application which is an operator aid in decision making to plan the maintenance and the configuration control.

Thus an integrated approach in assessing and maintaining the NPP safety is followed at all stages of the NPP at NPCIL including regulatory requirements.

Shri S. B. Chafle is Executive Director of Atomic Energy Regulatory Board. Before joining AERB in 2017, he worked at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Mumbai since 1988, where he was associated with Research Reactor Operation, Design of Process Systems of Research Reactors and Experimental Facilities of Research Reactors. Currently he is also Director, Nuclear Safety Analysis and Research Group, AERB; Ex-Officio Member of Board of AERB; Chairman, Safety Review Committee for Operating Plants (SARCOP); Chairman, Steering Committee for Co-ordination of Indian Participation in OECD/NEA activities; Member of BARC Safety Council (BSC) and Member of Crisis Management Group (CMG) of Department of Atomic Energy. He has B. Tech Degree in Chemical Engineering, Diploma in Financial Management (DFM) and Post Graduate Diploma in Software Technology (PGDST). He has wide-ranging experience and expertise in Process Design of Research Reactor systems and Reactor Safety Regulation.

Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB), the national nuclear regulatory body of India was established in 1983, for the safety regulation of nuclear and radiation facilities. The mission of AERB is to ensure the use of ionising radiation and nuclear energy in India does not cause undue risk to the health of people and the environment. AERB is entrusted with the responsibility for regulating activities related to nuclear power generation, nuclear fuel cycle facilities, research, industrial and medical uses of radiation. AERB develops safety codes, guides and standards for siting, design, construction, commissioning, operation and decommissioning of different types of nuclear & radiation facilities. AERB grants consents for different stages after safety review and assessment, for establishment of nuclear and radiation facilities following a graded approach. To accomplish its mission, AERB carries out and promotes safety related research as part of its regulatory work and in support of its regulatory decisions. The regulatory process at AERB is continuously evolving to cater to the new developments in reactor technology. In its journey of attaining maturity in safety regulation, AERB has traversed a long path from its evolution. This talk focuses on the evolution of safety regulation for nuclear power plants in India, approach adopted for regulatory decision-making and briefly describes the requirements and guidance related to Safety Assessment of NPPs.