A new reliability importance measure for components in a system, that we call Representativeness measure, is introduced. It evaluates to which extent the performance of a component is representative of the erformance of the whole system. Its relationship with Birnbaum’s measure is analyzed, and the ranking of components given by both measures are compared. These rankings happen to be equal when all components have the same reliability but different in general. In contrast with Birnbaum’s, the Representativeness reliability importance measure of a component does depend on its reliability.

Peer Reviewed