Reliability analysis of a retrial machine repair problem with warm standbys and a single server with N-policy

• Published in: Reliability engineering & system safety Vol. 180; pp. 476 - 486
• Main Authors: Chen, Wu-Lin, Wang, Kuo-Hsiung
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.12.2018
• Subjects: Controllable server; Reliability analysis; Retrial machine repair system; Sensitivity analysis; Working breakdown; Controllable server; Reliability analysis; Retrial machine repair system; Sensitivity analysis; Working breakdown
• ISSN: 0951-8320; 1879-0836
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ress.2018.08.011

•Summarize the works of the related fields including the reliability analysis of the retrial machine repair system with a controllable server in the literature.•Adopt the Laplace transform technique to derive the system reliability and the mean time to system failure of the model.•Address the sensitivity analyses of the system reliability and the mean time to system failure.•Design and execute the numerical experiments. The important results are presented and discussed. This study analyzes the system reliability of the retrial machine repair system with M operating units, S warm standby units and a single repair server with N-policy. Failure times of operating units and standby units are assumed to have exponential distributions with rates λ and η, respectively. When the repair server normally operates in serving failed units, it is subject to breakdown. The time to failure and the repair time for the single server are assumed to follow exponential distributions. When the server is broken down, it can also provide partial repair service with lower service rate. The repair times of failed units also have exponential distributions. Extensive numerical experiments are designed and executed to realize how performance measures are affected by the change of each system parameter.