Optimal burn-in for maximizing reliability of repairable non-series systems

Burn-in is a manufacturing process applied to products to eliminate early failures in the factory before the products reach the customers. Various methods have been proposed for determining an optimal burn-in time of a non-repairable system or a repairable series system, assuming that system burn-in improves all components in the system. In this paper, we establish the trade-off between the component reliabilities during system burn-in and develop an optimal burn-in time for repairable non-series systems to maximize reliability. One impediment to expressing the reliability of a non-series system is in that successive failures during system burn-in cannot be described precisely because a failed component is not detected until the whole system fails. For approximating the successive failures of a non-series system during system burn-in, we considered two types of repair: minimal repair at the time of system failure, and repair at the time of component or connection failure. The two types of repair provide bounds on the optimal system burn-in time of non-series systems.     

Network representation of dynamical systems: Connectivity patterns,information and predictability

The present work elaborates on predictability and information aspects of dynamical systems, in connection with the connectivity features of their network representation. The basic idea underlying this work is to map the set of coarse-grained states of a dynamical system onto a set of network nodes and transitions between them onto a set of network links. Based on the vertex centrality of these nodes, we define (a) a local indicator of predictability, (b) a measure of the information that is available about the state of the system after one transition occurring within an arbitrary long time window and (c) an upper bound for the time horizon of predictability. We address the cases of the tent and the cusp maps, as representative examples of Markov and non-Markov processes. An analytical exact result for the horizon of predictability is obtained for the tent map, as well as for its higher iterates, and its connection with the corresponding network diameters is discussed. Similarly, analytical expressions are derived for the bounds of the predictability horizon in the case of the cusp map.     

A hybrid maintenance model with imperfect inspection for a system with deterioration and Poisson failure

A new maintenance model for a system with both deterioration and Poisson failures is proposed. In this model, at any time-instant G _S and when the system is operating, one of the following decisions may be taken: (1) stop the system to perform a scheduled minimal maintenance; (2) stop the system to perform an inspection; and (3) no action and allow the system to go on with its operation. Following an inspection, based on the deterioration condition of the system, one of the following decisions may be taken: (a) if the system is in a ‘good’ condition, no maintenance action is taken and a number of periodic minimal maintenance activities are scheduled, starting T1 later; (b) if the system is in an ‘intermediate’ condition, a minimal maintenance is performed and an inspection is scheduled for T2 later (T2 < T1); and (c) if the system is in a ‘bad’ condition, a major maintenance is performed and a number of periodic minimal maintenances are scheduled, starting T1 later. In addition, a deterioration failure is restored by a major repair and a Poisson failure is restored by a minimal repair. Generalised stochastic Petri nets are used to represent and analyse the model, which represents a ‘composite’ maintenance strategy. Based on maximisation of the throughput of the system the benefit of this model compared to (1) an equivalent periodic inspection model and (2) an equivalent planned scheduled maintenance model, is demonstrated. This study presents a new hybrid model with a general framework for incorporating various types of maintenance policies. Also by incorporation of a number of features, this model will be more applicable to real world technical systems (complex systems), although it can be applied to individual components that are part of a complex system.     

汽车修理排队系统数据分析及配置优化

利用排队理论研究汽车修理系统,通过实例对输入过程和服务时间数据的整理进而验证了它们的分布规律,由此指出了应用排队模型类型,得到排队系统的各种基本运行参数,然后从顾客消费心理考虑,以区间估计的方法,在进入修理店时告知需要等待时间,最后给出汽车修理服务台的优化配置数.     

Transient failure behaviour of repairable systems

Theoretical models are presented to study the transient failurebehaviour of repairable systems under four different maintenancestrategies: breakdown maintenance, minimal repair, block replaament,and age replacement. The main feature of the approach is thatthe usual steady-state assumption-which is deemed to be unrealisticfor technical installations-is avoided. Specific attention isgiven to the number of (planned and unplanned) repairs and replacementsthat occur during a spenfied perid of time. The study describedin this paper has been performed as part of a project on maintenancemanning assessment in the oil industry. The results obtainedare of direct use for the analysis of maintenance workload,the centre of attention in the project.     

离散时间单部件可修系统瞬时可用度的渐近稳定性

针对离散时间下修理有延迟的单部件可修系统,研究了有限时间约束下的系统瞬时可用度模型.证明了该系统瞬时可用度的渐近稳定性,并得到了系统稳态可用度的表达式.结果表明系统瞬时可用度的稳定性对离散时间系统和连续时间系统具有一致性,进一步说明了离散时间下瞬时可用度模型的有效性,同时也加强了研究有限时间段内系统瞬时可用度波动的理论基础.     

Component redundancy allocation in optimal cost preventive maintenance scheduling

This work presents a methodology to assist maintenance teams in defining the maintenance schedule and redundancy allocation that minimise the life-cycle average cost of a system. The minimal data required are three average costs and one reliability function. This methodology is useful in a system design phase, since in this situation data is usually scarce or inaccurate, but can also be applied in the exploration phase. It consists of an adaptation of the classical optimal age replacement method, combined with a redundancy allocation problem. A set of simple illustrative examples covering a variety of operating conditions is presented, demonstrating quantitatively the applicability of the methodology to a range of maintenance optimisation decisions.     

Optimal corrective maintenance contract planning for aging multi‐state system

This paper considers an aging multi‐state system, where the system failure rate varies with time. After any failure, maintenance is performed by an external repair team. Repair rate and cost of each repair are determined by a corresponding corrective maintenance contract with a repair team. The service market can provide different kinds of maintenance contracts to the system owner, which also can be changed after each specified time period. The owner of the system would like to determine a series of repair contracts during the system life cycle in order to minimize the total expected cost while satisfying the system availability. Operating cost, repair cost and penalty cost for system failures should be taken into account. The paper proposes a method for determining such optimal series of maintenance contracts. The method is based on the piecewise constant approximation for an increasing failure rate function in order to assess lower and upper bounds of the total expected cost and system availability by using Markov models. The genetic algorithm is used as the optimization technique. Numerical example is presented to illustrate the approach. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

面向任务保障的多组件系统效益优化策略

为了保障系统在执行任务期间高可靠、高效益的运行,从系统效益的角度出发,构建了系统可靠性模型,采用边际效应思想构建了效益重要度,提出了一种面向任务保障的多组件系统效益优化策略。当系统可靠度下降到设定阈值时,计算系统各组件的效益重要度,选择效益重要度最大的组件进行备件分配,如此进行迭代,直到完成任务保障,形成最优的备件分配序列。通过该策略实现了以运行效益最优为目标,以系统可靠度和任务保障时长为约束的备件分配序列。最后,通过数值仿真验证了该策略的可行性。     

On transmission time through k minimal paths of a capacitated-flow network

The quickest path problem is to minimize the transmission time for sending a specified amount of data through a single minimal path. Two deterministic attributes are involved herein; the capacity and the lead time. However, in many real-life networks such as computer systems, urban traffic systems, etc., the arc capacity should be multistate due to failure, maintenance, etc. Such a network is named a capacitated-flow network. The minimum transmission time is thus not a fixed number. This paper is mainly to evaluate system reliability that d units of data can be transmitted through k minimal paths under time constraint T. A simple algorithm is proposed to generate all minimal capacity vectors meeting the demand and time constraints. The system reliability is subsequently computed in terms of such vectors. The optimal k minimal paths with highest system reliability can further be derived.     

A theoretical investigation of regular equivalences for fuzzy graphs

The notion of regular equivalence or bisimulation arises in different applications, such as positional analysis of social networks and behavior analysis of state transition systems. The common characteristic of these applications is that the system under modeling can be represented as a graph. Thus, regular equivalence is a notion used to capture the similarity between nodes based on their linking patterns with other nodes. According to Borgatti and Everett, two nodes are regularly equivalent if they are equally related to equivalent others. In recent years, fuzzy graphs have also received considerable attention because they can represent both the qualitative relationships and the degrees of connection between nodes. In this paper, we generalize the notion of regular equivalence to fuzzy graphs based on two alternative definitions of regular equivalence. While the two definitions are equivalent for crisp graphs, they induce different generalizations for fuzzy graphs. The first generalization, called regular similarity, is based on the characterization of regular equivalence as an equivalence relation that commutes with the underlying graph edges. The regular similarity is then a fuzzy binary relation that specifies the degree of similarity between nodes in the graph. The second generalization, called generalized regular equivalence, is based on the definition of coloring. A coloring is a mapping from the set of nodes to a set of colors. A coloring is regular if nodes that are mapped to the same color, have the same colors in their neighborhoods. Hence, generalized regular equivalence is an equivalence relation that can determine a crisp partition of the nodes in a fuzzy graph.     

基于排队论的专项汽修厂维修台配置数量研究

为了解决因维修台配置不合理而导致的专项汽修厂排队等待的问题,运用排队论等理论和方法,采用先到先修理与维修台带有优先权相结合的排队规则,将维修台配置数量问题转化为两类型服务台排队问题,建立了单队列M/M/s1+s2/K/∞/FCFS+PS排队模型.通过对某专项汽修厂相关的数据采集和分析,得到了模型所需的变量和参数,运用边际效益法进行优化,得到了节假日和非节假日客流高峰期的最优维修台配置数量.通过对系统服务强度、系统资源限制和服务时间段等因素的分析,既能保证排队系统可以在不同时间段内对维修台配置数量进行调整,又能缩小最优值的求解范围.     

Imperfect repair in degradation processes: A Kijima‐type approach

We consider a Wiener process with linear drift for degradation modeling. Regularly, maintenance actions are carried out which produce a reduction of the degradation level. In this paper, we consider the influence of such maintenance actions to the further development of the degradation process and the resulting lifetime distribution. A connection between virtual age in Kijima‐type models and degradation level in the underlying degradation process is developed. Furthermore, estimators for the process parameters as well as for the degree of repair are developed.     

Modeling past-dependent partial repairs for condition-based maintenance of continuously deteriorating systems

We are interested in the stochastic modeling of a condition-based maintained system subject to continuous deterioration and maintenance actions such as inspection, partial repair and replacement. The partial repair is assumed dependent on the past in the sense that it cannot bring the system back into a deterioration state better than the one reached at the last repair. Such a past-dependency can affect (i) the selection of a type of maintenance actions, (ii) the maintenance duration, (iii) the deterioration level after a maintenance, and (iv) the restarting system deterioration behavior. In this paper, all these effects are jointly considered in an unifying condition-based maintenance model on the basis of restarting deterioration states randomly sampled from a probability distribution truncated by the deterioration levels just before a current repair and just after the last repair/replacement. Using results from the semi-regenerative theory, the long-run maintenance cost rate is analytically derived. Numerous sensitivity studies illustrate the impacts of past-dependent partial repairs on the economic performance of the considered condition-based maintained system.     

Optimal overhaul intervals with imperfect inspection and repair

Author for correspondence.Email:m.j.newby{at}city.ac.uk This paper is motivated by the idea of a maintenance-free operatingperiod whose objectives are to improve mission reliability andcarry out as much maintenance as possible as a second-line activity.The system may be in one of three states (good, faulty, andfailed), and expressions are developed for the average costper unit time until failure. The system is periodically inspected,the inspection being imperfect in the sense that it can resultin both false-positive and false-negative results. Simple faultscan be fixed, but a repair is imperfect, in that there is anon-zero probability of a fault remaining after a repair. Aftera fixed number of inspections, the system is overhauled. Ifthe system fails during operation, it is replaced at increasedcost. The sojourn time in each state has non-constant failurerate, and discretization and supplementary variables are usedto give a Markovian structure which allows easy computationof the average costs. Minimizing the average cost gives theoptimal number of inspections before overhauling the system.     

Availability and maintenance of series systems subject to imperfect repair and correlated failure and repair

The series system is one of the most important and common systems in reliability theory and applications. This paper investigates availability, maintenance cost, and optimal maintenance policies of the series system with n constituting components under the general assumption that each component is subject to correlated failure and repair, imperfect repair, shut-off rule, and arbitrary distributions of times to failure and repair. Imperfect repair is modeled through the basic idea of the quasi renewal processes introduced by H. Wang, H. Pham, A quasi renewal process and its applications in imperfect maintenance, International Journal of Systems Science 27(10) (1996) 1055–1062; 28(12) (1997) 1329. System availability, mean time between system failures, mean time between system repairs, asymptotic fractional down time of the system, etc., are derived, and a numerical example is presented to compare with the existing models by R.E. Barlow, F. Proschan, Satistical Theory of Reliability of Life Testing, Holt, Renehart & Winston, NY, 1975. Then two classes of maintenance cost models are proposed and system maintenance cost rates are modeled. Finally, properties of system availability and maintenance cost rates are studied. Optimization models to optimize system availability and/or system maintenance costs are developed, and optimum system maintenance policies are discussed through a numerical example.     

Optimal system design considering warranty,periodic preventive maintenance,and minimal repair

This paper presents a cost minimisation model for an optimal design of a mixed series-parallel system with deteriorating components. The model incorporates warranty, periodic preventive maintenance, and minimal repair in the design of system configuration. Imperfect repair is adopted to model the effect of preventive maintenance. Both free and pro-rata warranty policies are considered. A numerical example is given to demonstrate the application of this model.     

Optimal maintenance of systems with Markovian mission and deterioration

We consider the maintenance of a mission-based system that is designed to perform missions consisting of a random sequence of phases or stages with random durations. A finite state Markov process describes the mission process. The age or deterioration process of the system is described by another finite state Markov process whose generator depends on the phases of the mission. We discuss optimal repair and optimal replacement problems, and characterize the optimal policies under some monotonicity assumptions. We also provide numerical illustrations to demonstrate the structure of the optimal policies.     

An integer programming model for the allocation of databases in a distributed computer system

Designers of distributed computer systems have to resolve issues like allocation of user nodes among processors, partitioning the central database and allocation of these partitions among processors. In this paper, we identify systems where decisions regarding the database partitioning and the allocation of these partitions among processors can be effectively merged with decisions regarding the assignment of user nodes to processors. An integer programming model that can be used in designing these systems is formulated. Heuristic and optimal solution procedures are developed. These procedures are tested and found to be effective on a wide range of problem structures.     

Replacement Policies under Minimal Repair

In many situations where system failures occur the concept of ‘minimal repair’ is important. A minimal repair occurs when the failed system is not treated so as to return it to ‘as new’ condition but is instead returned to the average condition for a working system of its age. Examples include complex systems where the repair or replacement of one component does not materially affect the condition of the whole system.For a system with decreasing reliability it will become increasingly expensive to maintain operation by minimal repairs, and the question then arises as to when the entire system should be replaced. We consider cases where the failure distribution can be modelled by the Weibull distribution. Two policies have been suggested for this case. One is to replace at a fixed time and the other is to replace at a fixed number of failures. We consider a third policy, to replace at the next failure after a fixed time, and show that it is optimal.Expressions to decide the replacement point and the cost of this policy are derived. Unfortunately these do not give rise to explicit representations, and so they are used to provide extensive numerical comparisons of the policies in a search for effective explicit approximations. Conclusions are drawn from these comparisons regarding the relative effectiveness of the policies and approximations.