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The computation of the reliability function of a (complex) coherent system is a difficult task. Hence, sometimes, we should simply work with some bounds (approximations). The computation of these bounds has been widely studied in the case of coherent systems with independent and identically distributed (IID) components. However, few results have been obtained in the case of heterogeneous (non ID) components. In this paper, we derive explicit bounds for systems with heterogeneous (independent or dependent) components. Also some stochastic comparisons are obtained. Some illustrative examples are included where we compare the different bounds proposed in the paper.

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In this article, we study how to derive bounds for the reliability and the expected lifetime of a coherent system with heterogeneous ordered components. These bounds can be used to compare the performance of the systems obtained by permuting the components at a given system structure, that is, to study where we should place the different components at a system structure to get the most reliable system. Moreover, a similar procedure is applied to get bounds for mixtures and for the generalized proportional hazard rate model when the baseline populations are ordered. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 64: 108–116, 2017