可靠度在21世紀 / Reliability in the 21st Century

可靠度在21世紀 郭位	Reliability in the 21st Century Way Kuo
隨著時代的進步，可靠性與維修性對我們的影響越來越大。美國於二次世界大戰前，因為軍事方面對高可靠性的要求，而相當重視可靠性的研究與發展；此外，可靠性在太空、核能應用與生物科技上，也有極為重要的影響性。	WITH times changing, mankind’s life is more and more affected by issues related to reliability or maintainability. Given the great value of high reliability in military affairs, the United States began to emphasise studies on reliability and its enhancement before Word War II broke out. In addition, the concept of reliability has since made a crucial impact on advances in such fields as space science and technology, nuclear energy’s application, and biotechnology.
可靠性是一種評估的方式。用可靠性的眼光來看，世上沒有歷久不衰的系統。本報告將分別從工程歷史及社會角度來思考可靠性與人們的密切關係，包括城市建築、航空、汽車製造及保險等多方面；另外，生病的治癒率和手術後的存活率、汽車品質的保證期、航太的維修性、金融方面的保值率等都是可靠性的表現。 在所有的系統中，人是最不可靠的，車禍次之，然後是戰爭，而微電子系統的故障率更低，與以上諸項相比，飛機及核能電廠的失事率則又更等而下之。 本報告也將由針對諸多可靠性的問題中瞭解並提供相關的改進方案，以便於人類達到二十一世紀中國古聖先賢『役物而不役於物』的旨意。	Reliability is an approach to assessment. In the light of reliability, there is no such thing as a system that lasts forever. This lecture will examine, from the perspectives of engineering’s history and social changes, how reliability relates to human lives in such areas as urban construction, aviation, car manufacturing, and insurance. Also, it will explore variant forms of reliability, including the cure rate of medical treatment, the survival rate after a surgical operation, the guarantee period for a new car, the maintainability of spacecraft, and the value-preserving rate in a financial transaction. Of all systems, mankind is the least reliable, with human errors presenting the highest probability. Less probable are traffic accidents from non-human causes, and even less so are casualties in wars, followed by failures in the working of micro-electronic systems. Compared with these, the rate of accidents involving aeroplanes or nuclear power plants is by far the lowest. This lecture will also discuss various topics about reliability so as to gain a better understanding of certain problems and to propose some solutions to them, in the hope that human beings in the 21st century will finally become “master of the material world, not a slave to it”, as advised by China’s sages in ancient times.
	(Translated by Allen Zhuang)
[作者於2004年4月21日在台灣演講，題為“古往今來可靠度”；此處源文是演講稿之前言部份；文稿轉載自台灣國家科學委員會。/ The source text is the introduction to a lecture given by the author in Taiwan on April 21, 2004.]