Allocation of tasks for reliability growth using multi-attribute utility

Abstract

In reliability growth models in particular, and project risk management more generally, improving the reliability of a system or product is limited by constraints on cost and time. There are many possible tasks which can be carried out to identify and design out weaknesses in the system under development. This paper considers the allocation problem: which subset of tasks to undertake. While the method is applicable to project risk management generally, the work has been motivated by reliability growth programmes. We utilise a model for reliability growth, based on an efficacy matrix, developed with engineering experts in the aerospace industry. We develop a general multi-attribute utility function based on targets for cost, time on test and system reliability. The optimal subset is identified by maximising the prior expected utility. We derive conditions on the model parameters for risk aversion and loss aversion based on observed properties of preference. We give conditions for multivariate risk aversion under the general form of the utility function. The method is illustrated using an example informed by work with aerospace organisations.

Supply chain risk network management: A Bayesian belief network and expected utility based approach for managing supply chain risks

“…However, operationally this specification would require that we elicit utility values over each state of the network in every possible cost realisation, which is often not feasible. To circumvent this problem, we assume that utility is separable in the evaluation of the state of the network and the cost of mitigation (Wilson & Quigley, 2016). To scale the evaluation of the cost of mitigation strategies we define a utility value for the cost v(C k ) that yields a utility of 1 if there is no cost and then reduces to a minimum value of zero as the cost of mitigation increases.…”

Emulation of Utility Functions Over a Set of Permutations: Sequencing Reliability Growth Tasks

“…While minimising program costs has been explored by , Hsieh [2003] a key shortcoming has been the representation of growth and program costs through continuous functions as decisions are discrete and choices are finite [Guikema and Pate-Cornell, 2002]. An exception to this is Johnston et al [2006] who explored minimising program cost with discrete choices through integer programming methods and Wilson and Quigley [2016] who provided a solution incorporating multi-attribute utility functions to allow trade-offs between attributes; however neither paper addressed the issue of sequencing the activities.…”

“…and this is is specified through expert elicitation based on the idea of an efficacy matrix [Johnston et al, 2006, Wilson andQuigley, 2016].…”

Optimal Reliability Growth Program for Repairable and Warranted Products

“…So far, more attention has been paid to test resources allocation with the objective of product reliability maximization [7,8,9,10]. Distinguishing the existing literature, in this paper, considering cost minimization, we deal with a reliability growth test program for repairable products subject to specified reliability growth target and sold with a two-dimensional warranty policy.…”