On preservation of classes of life distributions under reliability operations: Some complementary results

A counterexample of general character is constructed showing that the NWUE class is not preserved under mixing. Some general classes of life distributions are introduced and their behavior under mixing and convolution is studied. These classes have a theoretical character but coincide in many cases with well-known classes. It is proved that the DMRL class is not preserved under convolution.     

On matched active redundancy allocation for coherent systems with statistically dependent component lifetimes

This study addresses the allocation of matched active redundancy components to coherent systems with base components having statistically dependent lifetimes. We consider base component lifetimes and redundancy component lifetimes which are both stochastic arrangement monotone with respect to a pair of components given the lifetimes of the other components. In this context, allocating a more reliable redundancy component to the weaker base component is shown to incur a stochastically larger system lifetime. Numerical examples are presented as an illustration of the theoretical results.     

Weak aging properties for coherent systems with statistically dependent component lifetimes

As a relevant topic in reliability theory, the preservation of aging properties under the formation of various coherent structures contributes to improving system performance through better structure design and more effective system maintenance. The classical research in this line usually focuses upon coherent systems with independent component lifetimes. Recently, some authors discussed the preservation of IFR, NBU, and DMRL in the setting of dependent component lifetimes. This paper further investigates sufficient conditions for coherent systems with dependent component lifetimes to preserve aging properties including NBUC, NBU (2), DMRL, and their dual versions. Some examples are presented to illustrate coherent structures and typical copula functions fulfilling the present sufficient conditions as well.     

Failure profiles of coherent systems

In this paper we first introduce and study the notion of failure profiles which is based on the concepts of paths and cuts in system reliability. The relationship of failure profiles to two notions of component importance is highlighted, and an expression for the density function of the lifetime of a coherent system, with independent and not necessarily identical component lifetimes, is derived. We then demonstrate the way that failure profiles can be used to establish likelihood ratio orderings of lifetimes of two systems. Finally we use failure profiles to obtain bounds, in the likelihood ratio sense, on the lifetimes of coherent systems with independent and not necessarily identical component lifetimes. The bounds are relatively easy to compute and use. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2004     

On allocating one active redundancy to coherent systems with dependent and heterogeneous components' lifetimes

This article studies coherent systems of heterogenous and statistically dependent components' lifetimes. We present a sufficient and necessary condition for a stochastically longer system lifetime resulted by allocating a single active redundancy. For exchangeable components' lifetimes, allocating the redundancy to the component with more minimal path sets is proved to produce a more reliable system, and for systems with stochastic arrangement increasing components' lifetimes and symmetric structure with respect to two components, allocating the redundancy to the weaker one brings forth a larger reliability. Several numerical examples are presented to illustrate the theoretical results as well. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 63: 335–345, 2016     

On the application and extension of system signatures in engineering reliability

Following a review of the basic ideas in structural reliability, including signature‐based representation and preservation theorems for systems whose components have independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) lifetimes, extensions that apply to the comparison of coherent systems of different sizes, and stochastic mixtures of them, are obtained. It is then shown that these results may be extended to vectors of exchangeable random lifetimes. In particular, for arbitrary systems of sizes m < n with exchangeable component lifetimes, it is shown that the distribution of an m‐component system's lifetime can be written as a mixture of the distributions of k‐out‐of‐n systems. When the system has n components, the vector of coefficients in this mixture representation is precisely the signature of the system defined in Samaniego, IEEE Trans Reliabil R–34 (1985) 69–72. These mixture representations are then used to obtain new stochastic ordering properties for coherent or mixed systems of different sizes. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2008     

Reliability bounds for the NBUE distributions

In this paper, we study upper and lower bounds on the reliability in new better than used in expectation (NBUE) life distribution class with fixed first two moments. By a constructive proof, we determine the upper bounds on the reliability analytically in different regions and show that these bounds are sharp. For the lower bounds, similar results are obtained except in one region. For that region, a conjecture is given for further study. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 49: 781–797, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/nav.10035     

A note on a maximin disposal policy under nwue pricing

For the classical disposal model for selling an asset with unknown price distribution which is NWUE (new worse than used in expectation) with a given finite mean price, this note derives a policy which is maximin. The gain in using the maximin policy relative to the option of selling right away is convex decreasing in the continuation cost to mean price ratio. The relevant results of Derman, Lieberman and Ross also follow as a consequence of our analysis. Our theorem provides a practical justification of their main result on the cutoff bid for the disposal model subject to NWUE pricing.     

Some comparisons of residual life of coherent systems with exchangeable components

Most of the research, on the study of the reliability properties of technical systems, assume that the components of the system operate independently. However, in real life situation, it is more reasonable to assume that there is dependency among the components of the system. In this article, we give sufficient conditions based on the signature and the joint distribution of component lifetimes to obtain stochastic ordering results for coherent and mixed systems with exchangeable components. Some stochastic orders on dynamic (or conditional) signature of coherent systems are also provided. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 61: 549–556, 2014     

Estimating a survival curve when new is better than used in expectation

Let X be a positive random variable. The distribution F of X is said to be “new better than used in expectation,” or “NBUE,” if E(X) ⩾ E(X – t|X > t) for all t ⩾ 0. Suppose X₁, …, X_n, is a random sample from an NBUE distribution F. The problem of estimating F by a distribution which is itself NBUE is considered. The estimator G_n, defined as the NBUE distribution supported on the sample which minimizes the (sup norm) distance between the NBUE class and the empirical distribution function, is studied. The strong uniform consistency of G_n, is proven, and a numerical algorithm for obtaining G_n, is given. Our approach is applied to provide an estimate of the distribution of lifetime following the diagnosis of chronic granulocytic leukemia based on data from a National Cancer Institute study.     

Relative Aging of Coherent Systems

In this article, we carry out the stochastic comparison between coherent systems through the relative aging order when component lifetimes are independent and identically distributed. We make use of the signature to characterize the structure of coherent systems, and derive several sufficient conditions under which the compared systems with the common size can be ordered in the sense of relative aging. Specially, we present some scenarios wherein the better a coherent system is, the faster it ages. Moreover, we discuss the relative aging of dual systems as well. Several numerical examples are provided to illustrate the theoretical results. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 64: 345–354, 2017     

Estimating component characteristics from system failure‐time data

Suppose that failure times are available from a random sample of N systems of a given, fixed design with components which have i.i.d. lifetimes distributed according to a common distribution F. The inverse problem of estimating F from data on observed system lifetimes is considered. Using the known relationship between the system and component lifetime distributions via signature and domination theory, the nonparametric maximum likelihood estimator _N(t) of the component survival function (t) is identified and shown to be accessible numerically in any application of interest. The asymptotic distribution of _N(t) is also identified, facilitating the construction of approximate confidence intervals for (t) for N sufficiently large. Simulation results for samples of size N = 50 and N = 100 for a collection of five parametric lifetime models demonstrate the utility of the recommended estimator. Possible extensions beyond the i.i.d. framework are discussed in the concluding section. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2010     

Coherent systems based on sequential order statistics

The sequential order statistics (SOS) are a good way to model the lifetimes of the components in a system when the failure of a component at time t affects the performance of the working components at this age t. In this article, we study properties of the lifetimes of the coherent systems obtained using SOS. Specifically, we obtain a mixture representation based on the signature of the system. This representation is used to obtain stochastic comparisons. To get these comparisons, we obtain some ordering properties for the SOS, which in this context represent the lifetimes of k‐out‐of‐n systems. In particular, we show that they are not necessarily hazard rate ordered. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2011     

Dynamic signatures and their use in comparing the reliability of new and used systems

The signature of a system with independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) component lifetimes is a vector whose ith element is the probability that the ith component failure is fatal to the system. System signatures have been found to be quite useful tools in the study and comparison of engineered systems. In this article, the theory of system signatures is extended to versions of signatures applicable in dynamic reliability settings. It is shown that, when a working used system is inspected at time t and it is noted that precisely k failures have occurred, the vector s [0,1]^n‐k whose jth element is the probability that the (k + j)th component failure is fatal to the system, for j = 1,2,2026;,n ‐ k, is a distribution‐free measure of the design of the residual system. Next, known representation and preservation theorems for system signatures are generalized to dynamic versions. Two additional applications of dynamic signatures are studied in detail. The well‐known “new better than used” (NBU) property of aging systems is extended to a uniform (UNBU) version, which compares systems when new and when used, conditional on the known number of failures. Sufficient conditions are given for a system to have the UNBU property. The application of dynamic signatures to the engineering practice of “burn‐in” is also treated. Specifically, we consider the comparison of new systems with working used systems burned‐in to a given ordered component failure time. In a reliability economics framework, we illustrate how one might compare a new system to one successfully burned‐in to the kth component failure, and we identify circumstances in which burn‐in is inferior (or is superior) to the fielding of a new system. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2009     

On the conditional residual lifetime of coherent systems under double regularly checking

In this paper, we consider a coherent system with n independent and identically distributed components under the condition that the system is monitored at time instances t₁ and t₂ (t₁ < t₂). First, various mixture representations for reliability function of the conditional residual lifetime of the coherent system are derived under different scenarios at times t₁ and t₂ (t₁ < t₂). Several stochastic comparisons between two systems are also made based on the proposed conditional random variables. Then, we consider the conditional residual lifetime of the functioning components of the system given that j components have failed at time t₁ and the system has failed at time t₂. Some stochastic comparisons on the proposed conditional residual lifetimes are investigated. Several illustrative graphs and examples are also provided.     

The class of mifra lifetimes and its relation to other classes

In a previous paper, the authors have introduced a class of multivariate lifetimes (MIFRA) which generalize the univariate lifetimes with increasing failure rate average (IFRA). They have also shown that this class satisfies many fundamental properties. In this paper it is shown that other concepts of multivariate IFRA do not satisfy all of these properties. Relationships between MIFRA and these other concepts are given. Finally, positive dependence implications with respect to these classes are also discussed.     

Inequalities involving the lifetime of series and parallel systems

Let {Xⁱ} be independent HNBUE (Harmonic New Better Than Used in Expectation) random variables and let {Yⁱ} be independent exponential random variables such that E{Xⁱ}=E{Yⁱ} It is shown that \documentclass{article}\pagestyle{empty}\begin{document}$ E\left[{u\left({\mathop {\min \,X_i}\limits_{l \le i \le n}} \right)} \right] \ge E\left[{u\left({\mathop {\min \,Y_i}\limits_{l \le i \le n}} \right)} \right] $\end{document} for all increasing and concave u. This generalizes a result of Kubat. When comparing two series systems with components of equal cost, one with lifetimes {Xⁱ} and the other with lifetimes {Yⁱ}, it is shown that a risk-averse decision-maker will prefer the HNBUE system. Similar results are obtained for parallel systems.     

Asymptotic normality of the estimated optimal order quantity for one-period inventories with supply uncertainty

A one-period inventory situation where the supply is an NBUE random variable with mean proportional to the quantity ordered has been considered. The optimal exponential order quantity, which maximizes the minimum profit obtainable in the NBUE class of supply distributions, is a function of the demand distribution function. Here we show that an estimator of the maximin order quantity, which is already known to converge almost surely to its true value, converges also in distribution to an appropriate normal law with increasing sample size.     

Mean residual life of coherent systems consisting of multiple types of dependent components

Mean residual life is a useful dynamic characteristic to study reliability of a system. It has been widely considered in the literature not only for single unit systems but also for coherent systems. This article is concerned with the study of mean residual life for a coherent system that consists of multiple types of dependent components. In particular, the survival signature based generalized mixture representation is obtained for the survival function of a coherent system and it is used to evaluate the mean residual life function. Furthermore, two mean residual life functions under different conditional events on components’ lifetimes are also defined and studied.     

The joint signature of coherent systems

We investigate the joint signature of $m$ coherent systems, under the assumption that the components have independent and identically distributed lifetimes. The joint signature, for a particular ordering of failure times, is an $m$‐dimensional matrix depending solely on the composition of the systems and independent of the underlying distribution function of the component lifetimes. The elements of the $m$‐dimensional matrix are formulated based on the joint signatures of numerous series of parallel systems. The number of the joint signatures involved is an exponential function of the number of the minimal cut sets of each original system and may, therefore, be significantly large. We prove that although this number is typically large, a great number of the joint signatures are repeated, or removed by negative signs. We determine the maximum number of different joint signatures based on the number of systems and components. It is independent of the number of the minimal cut sets of each system and is polynomial in the number of components. Moreover, we consider all permutations of failure times and demonstrate that the results for one permutation can be of use for the others. Our theorems are applied to various examples. The main conclusion is that the joint signature can be computed much faster than expected.