Allocation of Resources to Maximize Quality Measure of a System

The paper deals with a system consisting of the related elements. Elements and a system itself have several common binary attributes (eg, failure, success). A simple heuristic approach is proposed to solve the following allocation problem: limited quantity of resource is to be allocated among elements to maximize a quality measure defined over possible combinations of the system attributes values. Four alternative formulations of the system quality measure and algorithms are suggested. The algorithms are convenient, have polynomial running times, and guarantee reasonably good solutions.