On a general measure of component importance

It is useful in many situations to have some idea of the relative importance of the components in a system. In this paper a general measure of the importance of system components is studied. The measure is obtained by ordering the reduction of the expected yield due to the variation of the life-time distribution of the components. Some results useful in comparison of the importance of components are obtained and some bounds are also derived. Some interesting properties of the importance of modules are also studied. © 1991.