Reliability Theory : With Applications to Preventive Maintenance : Springer : 9783642086656 : 3642086659 : 01 Dec 2010 : The material in this book was first presented as a one-semester course in Relia­ bility Theory and Preventive Maintenance for M.Sc. students of the Industrial Engineering Department of Ben Gurion University in the 1997/98 and 1998/99 academic years. Engineering students are mainly interested in the applied part of this theory. The value of preventive maintenance theory lies in the possibility of its imple­ mentation, which crucially depends on how we handle statistical reliability data. The very nature of the object of reliability theory - system lifetime - makes it extremely difficult to collect large amounts of data. The data available are usu­ ally incomplete, e.g. heavily censored. Thus, the desire to make the course material more applicable led me to include in the course topics such as mod­ eling system lifetime distributions (Chaps. 1,2) and the maximum likeli