Reliability evaluation of systems composed of non-identical multi-state components is a challenging task due to the highly combinatorial nature of the problem. The outcome is a lack of understanding regarding the reliability behavior of a system when components with different magnitudes of failure probabilities are considered, especially when extra components are added. The present work addresses this problem by presenting a simplified approach to analyze variations on reliability profiles of series and parallel systems composed of non-identical three-state components. In addition, this work presents an optimization model for allocation of non-identical components under financial and physical restrictions. The model performed satisfactorily in terms of robustness when different magnitudes of failure probabilities were tested.
Non-identical components; Multi-state systems; Component allocation
