Applying cost-reliability analysis to improve system reliability

A system is generally constructed using a set of individual components based on their own reliabilities and inter-precedence constraints, with such systems generally referred to as a stochastic one. Improving reliability is one of the key tasks of managers, and since this is generally based on the reliability of individual system components, it is necessary to establish the priority of various improvement actions based on these. This study proposes two techniques to achieve this: one is a process of cost-reliability analysis, that can help decision-makers in the selection of the appropriate policies to raise system reliability, and the other is a way to identify the importance of various system components in order to ascertain the order in which they should be improved. In addition, this study shows that if the lifetime of a component satisfies an exponential distribution, then in order to maximize overall system reliability the optimal replacement time for this component is its half-lifetime. By considering both the results of a cost-reliability analysis and the importance of individual components, decision-makers can set appropriate policies to effectively improve system reliability.