Question

As the Operations Manager at company, you must decide which product design, A or B,

has the higher reliability. B is designed with backup units for components R3 and R4 .

Determine the reliability of each design shown below?


product A

r1 r2 r3 r4

0.99--0.95--0.998--0.995-->


product b

r1 r2 r3 r4

0.99--0.95--0.985---0.99-->

----------------- l----------l
------------------0.95-----0.99

Answer 1

To calculate the overall reliability of each product design, we need to use the formula for parallel and series connections of components.

For Product A, the overall reliability is:

0.99 x 0.95 x 0.998 x 0.995 = 0.9367 or 93.67%

For Product B, we can see that R3 and R4 are in parallel with each other, so we need to calculate their combined reliability first:

R3&R4 = 1 - (1-0.985) x (1-0.99) = 0.99415

Then, we can calculate the overall reliability of Product B:

0.99 x 0.95 x 0.99415 = 0.9316 or 93.16%

Therefore, based on these calculations, Product A has a higher reliability than Product B.