History

Reliability Engineering activities at IIT Kharagpur started after Prof. K. B. Misra (http://ramsconsultants.org/Profile.htm) joined Electrical Engineering department in 1980 and as a first step, an interdisciplinary Reliability Engineering Group was constituted in 1981 with the representatives from interested departments of the Institute. Subsequently, an M.Tech. programme in Reliability Engineering was started in 1982 from Electrical Engineering department with students admitted through GATE and sponsored candidates from Industry and Defence organizations with Prof. K.B.Misra as its convener. This was the first ever postgraduate programme in Reliability Engineering in India, which subsequently continued under the aegis of Reliability Engineering Centre.

In 1983, K.B. Misra was appointed as coordinator for a Multi-million project to establish a Reliability Engineering Centre (REC) by Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, of which he was the founder Head. The primary aim of this centre was to create awareness about reliability engineering education, research and application of the concepts of quality and reliability engineering in all aspects of engineering and technology