Journal of Quality Engineering and Management

Multi-state series–parallel system optimization using the genetic algorithm

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Sirvan Karimi 1
Mehdi Karbasian 2
Reza Tavakoli-Moghadam 3

1 Islamic Azad University, Najafabad Branch, Department of Industrial Engineering, Isfahan Province, Iran

2 Department of Industrial Engineering, Malek Ashtar University of Technology, Tehran, Tehran Province, Iran

3 Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Tehran Province, Iran

Abstract
The growing need for systems with high availability/reliability has led to numerous studies in recent years on reliability optimization (availability, if the system is repairable). The use of different redundancy policies and adding extra components are generally considered effective ways to increase system availability. When the system is multi-state, due to the computational complexity involved, the methods used to calculate system availability play a crucial role in providing an acceptable solution. This paper aims to minimize costs for multi-state systems under the constraint that system availability must exceed an acceptable threshold. The redundancy allocation problem is modeled as heterogeneous, meaning that components in such a system can differ from one another. Both components and the system can have multiple states. To compute system availability, the Universal Generating Function (UGF) algorithm is employed, and to optimize the system structure, the Genetic Algorithm (GA) is used.

Keywords

Multi-state systems
heterogeneous redundancy
Universal Generating Function (UGF) algorithm
genetic algorithm
Journal of Quality Engineering and Management
Volume 5, Issue 1
Spring 2015
Pages 13-22

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