On the availability of a warm standby system: a numerical approach

We consider a basic duplex system characterized by warm standby and attended by two general heterogeneous repairmen. In order to derive computational results for the point availability of the engineering system, we first employ a stochastic process endowed with time-dependent transition measures satisfying coupled partial differential equations. However, an explicit evaluation of the (exact) solution is in general excluded. Therefore, we also propose a numerical solution of the equations. Our methodology is based on new modification of the first-order upwind scheme applied to a semiinfinite region. As an application, we consider the important case of Weibull–Gnedenko repair and provide an in-depth analysis of some key features of the duplex system. Copyright Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa 2014