M.J. Baker – författare

Design is an important factor in business success. This book, first published in 1989, analyses what the role of design is in business success; just what design is; and how both design and its management might be improved. It draws on extensive original research by the authors in eighty-seven companies regarded as leaders in the field of export and technological achievement and it reports on the experiences of these companies. Among the book’s many important conclusions and recommendations for improved practice are: that design, rather than price, is the key factor in determining customer/user satisfaction; and that success with design is the leading characteristic of firms that compete successfully in international markets.

Design is an important factor in business success. This book, first published in 1989, analyses what the role of design is in business success; just what design is; and how both design and its management might be improved. It draws on extensive original research by the authors in eighty-seven companies regarded as leaders in the field of export and technological achievement and it reports on the experiences of these companies. Among the book’s many important conclusions and recommendations for improved practice are: that design, rather than price, is the key factor in determining customer/user satisfaction; and that success with design is the leading characteristic of firms that compete successfully in international markets.

Structural reliability theory is concerned with the rational treatment of uncertainties in struc­ tural engineering and with the methods for assessing the safety and serviceability of civil en­ gineering and other structures. It is a subject which has grown rapidly during the last decade and has evolved from being a topic for academic research to a set of well-developed or develop­ ing methodologies with a wide range of practical applications. Uncertainties exist in most areas of civil and structural engineeri'1.g and rational design decisions cannot be made without modelling them and taking them into account. Many structural en­ gineers are shielded from having to think about such problems, at least when designing simple structures, because of the prescriptive and essentially deterministic nature of most codes of practice. This is an undesirable situation. Most loads and other structural design parameters are rarely known with certainty and should be regarded as random variables or stochastic processes, even if in design calculations they are eventually treated as deterministic. Some problems such as the analysis of load combinations cannot even be formulated without recourse to probabilistic reasoning.