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Risk-Conscious Operations Management (RCOM)

By Prof. Prabhakar V Varde   |   Guest-Professor, Lulea University of Technology, Sweden & Senior Professor, Homi Bhabha Nation Institute (Former)
Learners enrolled: 193   |  Exam registration: 26
ABOUT THE COURSE:

Risk component is inherent to any engineering or business operational environment and a systematic assessment and management of risk in perpetuality is the requirement of safety assurance. There is a general consensus that operational eco-system is human interaction intensive component and this is the reason human factor is the major contributing factor to risk. A risk-conscious operations management helps understand not only human but also organizational factors responsible for human error. This course is design to understand not only the contributing factors but also provide an effective framework for risk reduction in operational management of complex engineering systems.

INTENDED AUDIENCE: Anyone with a BE/BTech having done a UG level course on control theory, or with an MSc in mathematics having done courses on dynamical systems can go through this course.

PREREQUISITES: B.Tech. in any engineering discipline

INDUSTRY SUPPORT: Any company that does control systems design: aerospace, robotics, chemical processes, etc. should value/recognize this online course. For example, Eaton, Honeywell, GE, ABB, etc. Process & Chemical plants. Transport Systems, Rail way, Shipping and Aviation; Space Systems; Security Systems.
Summary
Course Status : Completed
Course Type : Elective
Language for course content : English
Duration : 12 weeks
Category :
  • Multidisciplinary
Credit Points : 3
Level : Postgraduate
Start Date : 21 Jul 2025
End Date : 10 Oct 2025
Enrollment Ends : 04 Aug 2025
Exam Registration Ends : 22 Aug 2025
Exam Date : 25 Oct 2025 IST
NCrF Level   : 4.5 — 8.0

Note: This exam date is subject to change based on seat availability. You can check final exam date on your hall ticket.


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Course layout

Week 1: Introduction to Risk-conscious operations management: Operations management of complex engineering systems. Major functions of operations management, that include, Plant administration / management and hierarchy of reporting, surveillance & decision making, protocol for adherence to technical specifications, maintenance planning and scheduling, technical scheduling including fueling and inventory management. Training and qualification, financial management, Salient features of safety management in respect of operations management activities, Regulatory provisions and compliance protocols in the plant.

Week 2: Dependability Engineering:
Introduction, Risk-conscious approach, role of dependency modelling, dependability assessment, special areas, common cause failure vis-à-vis root cause analysis and role of physics of failure modelling. Potential role of intelligent and automation systems, root cause analysis.

Week 3: Risk-based Engineering: RBE framework, role of deterministic and probabilistic integrations in operational tasks including technical specification optimizations, role of surveillance, monitoring and prognosis. Development of operational metrics and requirements for operational risk simulation for identified scenarios. Creation of database of hardware and human factors for risk-simulation.

Week 4: Risk-conscious Culture: Background, residual risk and risk-perception, culture, limitation of safety culture paradigm, Risk-conscious culture: Governing principles, Risk-model, Organizational and Human elements, technical elements.

Week 5: Risk Modelling & Simulation : Integrated risk simulation framework, data analytics, on-line risk monitoring, role of simulator in risk simulation, Operational postulated initiating even and emergency operating procedure simulation to support development of human factor for emergency conditions.

Week 6: Probabilistic Security Risk Assessment : identification and source of malicious acts, insider and outsider risk, identification of vulnerabilities, common cause potential evaluation, modeling and assessment of damage potential. Role of simulations

Week 7: Role of Consciousness in RCOM : Background, evolution of science and philosophy of consciousness, consciousness and human reliability, Consciousness framework for RCOM. Historical perspective. Major philosophies of science of consciousness.

Week 8: Operations research : Risk-based surveillance test interval (STI) and Allowable Outage Time evaluation as part of scheduling and time management. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM). Inventory management as part of material requirements and planning (MRP). Network optimization and engineering, packet routing optimization. Role of command and control protocol, scheduling, planning, documentation, inventory management, decision making during emergency conditions.

Week 9: Human factors in operations : Implication of human factor in operations, CQB Human reliability model. Anatomy and Physiological processes in cognition, major attributes of consciousness in RCOM, Conscience and plant security aspects, reference human model in RCOM, modelling of sense bases, operational performance influencing factors. Role of root cause analysis in support of identifying the human roots.

Week 10: Operational Risk Management: Integrated operations Risk, Risk-based, Risk-informed, and risk-conscious approach – distinguishing features, Operational risk indicators, Integrated Operational Risk assessment and management framework, Precursor Analysis, Human Factor & RCOM

Week 11: Risk-conscious Maintenance Management: Equipment Life Cycle management vis-à-vis, evolution of maintenance management, risk-conscious maintenance management – the framework, implementation strategy, maintenance and test interval optimization, role of precursor monitoring to reduce common cause failure.

Week 12: Role of AI&ML in RCOM: Intelligent operator advisory systems, role of ANN and fuzzy rule-based system, risk-framework in support of diagnostics and state prediction. Decision algorithms and criteria.


Books and references

[1] Risk-conscious Operations Management – An Integrated Paradigm for Complex Engineering Systems. Varde P.V., Springer, 2023.
[2] Risk-based Engineering – An integrated approach to complex engineering systems – Special Reference to Nuclear Plants, Varde P.V., India & Pecht M.G., USA.
[3] What an engineer should know about Risk and Reliability, Modarres, M. 1988.
[4] Advances in Risk-informed Technologies – Keynote Vol. (ICRESH-2024), Varde, P.V., Kumar Manoj, Agarwal M., Springer, 2024.
[5] Prognostics and Health Management of Electronics, Pecht, M.G., Wiley, 2008.
[6] Intelligent Fault Diagnosis and Prognosis for Engineering Systems, Vachtsevanos G., et. al., 2006
[7] System Health Management – with aerospace applications, Johnson, S.B. Wiley, 2011.

Instructor bio

Prof. Prabhakar V Varde

Guest-Professor, Lulea University of Technology, Sweden & Senior Professor, Homi Bhabha Nation Institute (Former)
Prof. Prabhakar V. Varde, Guest Professor, Lulea Technology University,Lulea Sweden,President, Society for Reliability and Safety, India; Former Outstanding Scientist, Senior Professor at Homi Bhabha National Institute (Former) & Associate Director, Reactor Group at BARC, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai. He also served for two terms as Professor of Practice at IIT Madras, and was awarded Raja Ramanna Fellow, during 2021 and 2024. at BARC and He is also a Visiting Professorat Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering, University of Maryland, MD, USA.
He has been actively involved in the area of reliability and probabilistic risk assessment for over 25 years. He has developed PRA model for the nuclear plants at BARC as also worked a vice chairman of the AERB committee for PSA for DAE facilities for over 15 years. He took classes for Reliability Engineering for four terms at BARC Training School and University of Maryland. He has set up four labs, viz, nuclear reactor simulator, Life Cycle Reliability Engineering, Prognostics and Health Management and Accelerated Life Testing labs, to support for advanced research in the area of risk and reliability engineering.
He is the lead founder of Society for Reliability and Safety in India and the lead Chief-Editor for SRESA’s Int. Journal Life Cycle Reliability and Safety Engineering. He organized four international (ICRESH) and 5 national conferences (NCRS) in last 17 years.
Based on his research he has over 250 publications at national and international level that includes peer reviewed journal. This also includes 17 edited- referred conference proceedings, authored books and Technical Volumes. His google scholar 1100 citations and H-Index is 11, I-Index-11. He is consultant to International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna and OECDs NEA-WGRISK, Paris in the area of Probabilistic Risk Assessment. He is a Ph.D. and M.Tech. guide and Ph.D. examiner at IIT Bombay, IIT Madras, IIT Kharagpur, IIIT-DMG, Jabalpur, Delhi University and in many national institutions and universities.
Presently he is also working as President, SRESA for spreading risk and reliability awareness not only in academic circles, but engineering students and developing means a method to develop tools and methods to support national programs. One of these initiatives is development of engineering codes and standards in the area of safety and reliability, working on setting up Indian Institute of Risk and Reliability (IIRR).

Course certificate

The course is free to enroll and learn from. But if you want a certificate, you have to register and write the proctored exam conducted by us in person at any of the designated exam centres.
The exam is optional for a fee of Rs 1000/- (Rupees one thousand only).
Date and Time of Exams : October 25, 2025 Morning session 9am to 12 noon; Afternoon Session 2pm to 5pm.
Registration url: Announcements will be made when the registration form is open for registrations.
The online registration form has to be filled and the certification exam fee needs to be paid. More details will be made available when the exam registration form is published. If there are any changes, it will be mentioned then.
Please check the form for more details on the cities where the exams will be held, the conditions you agree to when you fill the form etc.

CRITERIA TO GET A CERTIFICATE

Average assignment score = 25% of average of best 8 assignments out of the total 12 assignments given in the course.
Exam score = 75% of the proctored certification exam score out of 100

Final score = Average assignment score + Exam score

Please note that assignments encompass all types (including quizzes, programming tasks, and essay submissions) available in the specific week.

YOU WILL BE ELIGIBLE FOR A CERTIFICATE ONLY IF AVERAGE ASSIGNMENT SCORE >=10/25 AND EXAM SCORE >= 30/75. If one of the 2 criteria is not met, you will not get the certificate even if the Final score >= 40/100.

Certificate will have your name, photograph and the score in the final exam with the breakup.It will have the logos of NPTEL and IIT Bombay. It will be e-verifiable at nptel.ac.in/noc.

Only the e-certificate will be made available. Hard copies will not be dispatched.

Once again, thanks for your interest in our online courses and certification. Happy learning.

- NPTEL team
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