Optimal Sampling Schemes for Estimating System Reliability by Testing Components—I: Fixed Sample Sizes

Abstract A Bayesian decision theoretic approach is employed to compare sampling schemes designed to estimate the reliability of series and parallel systems by testing individual components. Quadratic loss is assumed and schemes are found which minimize Bayes risk plus sampling cost. Several kinds of initial information concerning the reliability of the individual components, all of which assume the components function independently, are considered. The case for which the initial information is in terms of the system's reliability is briefly considered and related to the aforementioned case