Component Reliability Importance assessment on complex systems using Credible Improvement Potential

Nowadays system reliability performance represents a key issue and being reliable becomes a fundamental requirement of products in many manufacturing fields. The paper is focused on the reliability improvement of fault tolerant complex systems using component Reliability Importance (RI) procedures in order to assess the impact of each component on the overall system reliability. This study is focused on RI assessment during design stage with the aim of optimizing engineers' efforts and focusing on components with the greatest effect on the whole system. The first part of the paper focuses on a particular Reliability Importance measure, the Credible Improvement Potential (CIP), which is the most suitable RI metric for our purpose. The Reliability Importance assessment on a dedicated case study based on fault tolerant complex system is then proposed and results are discussed in detail.