Abstract:

The performance of systems, products and services has always been a concern of designers, operations and maintenance engineers since the beginning of the past century. This aspect has been addressed over time in the last Century by devising several performance attributes like quality, reliability, maintainability, safety/ risk of what could be called as attributes of dependability. This was indeed required in order to promote economic and efficient utilization of resources and to optimize performance. But with environmental concern becoming all pervading, the emphasis has to shift to develop products, systems and services that are not only dependable but sustainable as well.
The aim of this concept paper is to propose a procedure of designing products, systems and services based on an overall index of performability so that it could be used as criteria for developing future designs.