If you use application software such as Word-Processing programs or Personal Information Managers, you know right away if the program is working right, or not.

It’s different with programs like ours. Who’s to say that the mathematical models that have been chosen to solve our range of problems, are doing their jobs properly? The mere display of numbers and graphs doesn’t by any means guarantee that the information you’re getting is right.

It’s good to be skeptical, after all, in some cases anyone, even persons with very little expertise could have written the programs, and be providing answers to you that aren’t right. Not only would the software be worthless, but also the answers you get could lead you towards some very costly erroneous decisions.

That’s our long-winded way of saying that you should ensure yourself that the people behind the scenes — the people who created the little black boxes that the data goes into, and the answers come out of — are totally reliable and have impeccable credentials.

As you may have guessed, our creators do! We want to introduce you to Dr.Andrew Jardine and Dr.Nicholas Hastings. Their years of experience and profound knowledge in the field of maintenance and reliability were vital to the development of AGE/CON and PERDEC (in the case of Jardine), RELCODE (in the case of Hastings, with support from Jardine), and EXAKT in the case of Jardine and a team of Ph.Ds at the University of Toronto.

Here are biographical sketches of these distinguished engineers.

Andrew Jardine

Dr. Andrew K.S. Jardine Ph.D, C.Eng., M.I.Mech.E., M.I.E.E., P.Eng. has been actively involved — for over 25 years — with teaching, research and the application of scientific techniques to real-world decisions in equipment maintenance, replacement and reliability.

A native of Scotland, Dr. Jardine attended Strathclyde University where he was awarded his undergraduate and graduate degrees. He subsequently was appointed to lecture in the Department of Operational Research. From Strathclyde he went to the University of Birmingham where he obtained his Ph.D., and became a member of its Department of Engineering Production.

In the mid-’70s Dr.Jardine took up residence in Canada and became Head of the Department of Engineering Management at the Royal Military College. In 1986 he was appointed Chairman of the Department of Industrial Engineering at Canada’s largest learning institution, the pre-eminent University of Toronto. After serving two terms, he took sabbatical leave and joined the faculty at Hong Kong Polytechnic University where he occupied the post of Dean, Faculty of Business and Information Systems. Two years later Dr. Jardine returned to the University of Toronto where he is now Professor of Industrial Engineering, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. He is currently heading up a number of important groundbreaking research projects, one of which is the study of Condition-Based Maintenance. The project-team has recently completed the development of software — EXAKT — for this application.

At the present time, Dr. Jardine is on leave from the University of Toronto and is working in the Toronto office of PricewaterhouseCoopers, the world’s largest consulting firm. He has been given an important role in PwC’s International Centre of Excellence for Maintenance to work on issues of maintenance optimization and reliability management.

Dr.Jardine’s is in demand world-wide. He is often than not to be found in such places as Melbourne, Johannesburg, Eindhoven, Nevada and London. His time is divided between his work as a -consultant to industry, as a leader of maintenance workshops, and as a speaker at international conferences. He has, for example, worked for such organizations as Bell Canada, Ontario Hydro, Hong Kong Mass Transit, American Barrick Resources Corporation, Electricity Trust of South Australia, and Montreal Urban Transit. His seminars have been held at The University of Pretoria, McGill University, the University of Toronto, the University of British Columbia and Monash University in Melbourne. Recent speaking engagements have included the U.S.-based Association of Iron and Steel Engineers, the South African Maintenance Society and the Maintenance Engineering Society of Australia.

The software he has developed — AGE/CON and PERDEC — is licensed to over 300 companies world wide, and he is the co-system designer for the original version of RELCODE. Dr. Jardine is also the author of five textbooks on quantitative management techniques, including the widely-used and frequently-reprinted "Maintenance. Replacement and Reliability" which has been translated in whole or in part into Chinese, Arabic and Spanish.

Nicholas Hastings

Dr. Nicholas Hastings Ph.D., M.A., C.Eng., F.I.E.Aust., M.Mech.E., MACS is an educator, researcher, consultant, author and software developer who has won an international reputation for his work.

Originally from England, Dr. Hastings was awarded his undergraduate degree from Cambridge and his doctorate from the University of Birmingham, and then served for ten years as a maintenance manager with the British Army. For the last twenty years he has lived in Australia, connected first with Monash University — Australia’s largest — as Professor of Operations Research, and currently at Queensland University of Technology where he holds one of the world’s few chairs in maintenance engineering. Dr. Hastings has contributed to a number of important developments in his field. For example, he pioneered the repair limit replacement method, a widely-accepted technique for economic replacement for long-life equipment, and developed improvements to Weibull analysis which result in more accurate distribution fitting and better estimates of reliability. He has published research papers in leading research journals as well as four books on quantitative management techniques. He is also the co-author of "Statistical Distributions", published by Wiley, NY. This has sold several thousand copies and is now in its third edition.

Dr. Hastings is active as a consultant and seminar leader, and has conducted sessions at universities and corporations around the world. He is chairman of a branch of the Maintenance Engineering Society of Australia, a role that involved him heavily with member-industries such as mining, oil refining, chemicals and manufacturing. His software product, RELCODE, is the result of several decades of work and experience as well as input from leading maintenance practitioners. The user documentation alone is a mini-textbook and offers the user a practical understanding of the principles and techniques of reliability and preventive replacement analysis. RELCODE has been licensed to hundreds of major companies and utilities around the world, and has been adopted as an educational aid by several universities. Dr. Hastings says... "Many RELCODE users have reported substantial dollar-savings deriving from the understanding and analysis provided by the software. These savings accrue from providing factual information on the root cause of failure, and on the most economically viable replacement policy."