Importance measures for degrading components based on cooperative game theory

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose new importance measures for degrading components based on Shapley value, which can provide answers about how important players are to the whole cooperative game and what payoff each player can reasonably expect. Design/methodology/approach: The proposed importance measure characterizes how a specific degrading component contributes to the degradation of system reliability by using Shapley value. Degradation models are also introduced to assess the reliability of degrading components. The reliability of system consisting independent degrading components is obtained by using structure functions, while reliability of system comprising correlated degrading components is evaluated with a multivariate distribution. Findings: The ranking of degrading components according to the newly developed importance measure depends on the degradation parameters of components, system structure and parameters characterizing the association of components. Originality/value: Considering the fact that reliability degradation of engineering systems and equipment are often attributed to the degradation of a particular or set of components that are characterized by degrading features. This paper proposes new importance measures for degrading components based on Shapley value to reflect the responsibility of each degrading component for the deterioration of system reliability. The results are also able to give timely feedback of the expected contribution of each degrading component to system reliability degradation.