A Note on Heuristic Methods in Optimal System Reliability

Many optimization techniques have been used to solve redundancy allocation problems, most of which result in noninteger solutions. A few, including dynamic programming and integer programming, as well as a host of heuristic methods give integer solutions. This note critically reviews six promising heuristic approaches. The advantages and disadvantages of each of the approaches are discussed. An extended approach is presented which incorporates some of the ideas of the previous methods for solving a general non series-parallel system. The extended approach appears to be quite efficient and is general. The simplicity and efficiency of the approach will lend itself to solving large practical problems.