ON THE IMPORTANCE OF DIFFERENT COMPONENTS IN A MULTICOMPONENT SYSTEM

Abstract

In a system whose functioning or failure depends on the functioning or failure of its components, some components may play a more important part than others. A quantitative definition of this notion of importance is proposed in the present paper for systems with coherent structures, assuming (1) that only the structure of the system is known, or (2) that also the reliabilities of all components are known. Some theoretical properties of the so defined concepts are discussed, and applications are presented to such problems as allocation of spare parts or appropriation of funds for improvement of component reliability.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 20, 1968
Accession Number
AD0670563

Entities

People

  • Z. W. Birnbaum

Organizations

  • University of Washington

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Classification
  • Identities
  • Mathematics
  • Military Research
  • Probability
  • Probability Distributions
  • Random Variables
  • Reliability
  • Security
  • Spare Parts
  • United States
  • United States Government

Readers

  • Public Financial Management and Budgeting
  • Systems Analysis and Design