Customer’s Cumulative Experience Measures for Reliability of Non-Repairable Aging Multi-State Systems

Abstract In this paper, the concept of customer-centered reliability measure is discussed and a new customer-centered reliability measure is developed based on the customer’s cumulative experience with the non-repairable multi-state system. The deterioration of the system is assumed to follow the nonhomogeneous continuous time Markov process (NHCTMP) which is a continuous time and discrete state process. The customer’s disutility also changes with the state of the system. An exponential disutility function, which is commonly given in economics, is incorporated with the stochastic model for estimating the total customer’s experience with the system over time. Examples for computations of reliability measures from the viewpoint of the customer are demonstrated using Mathematica 5.0.