Importance Measures for System Components in Population Models

Population models have been developed for large‐scale maintenance requirements planning. However, these models assume that all component groupings are equally important or critical to the functioning of the overall system. Importance measures from the literature are reviewed and modified to accommodate varying age groupings of identical components. By measuring the relative importance of component groupings in population models, an analyst will be able to identify those component groupings which merit further research and development in an attempt to increase overall system reliability at minimum cost. Numerical examples are presented for the cases of components with and without repair after failure.