Multiple Weighted Objectives Heuristic for the Redundancy Allocation Problem

A new heuristic is proposed and tested for system reliability optimization. The multiple weighted objective heuristic is based on a transformation of the problem into a multiple objective optimization problem, and then ultimately, transformation into a different single objective problem. The multiple objectives are to simultaneously maximize the reliability of each individual subsystem. This is a logical approach because system reliability is the product of the subsystem reliabilities, so if they are maximized, the system reliability will also be high. This new formulation and associated heuristic are then based on solving a sequence of linear programming problems. It is one of the very few optimization approaches that allow for linear programming algorithms and software to be used for the redundancy allocation problem when mixing of functionally equivalent components is allowed. Thus, it represents an efficient solution method that relies on readily available optimization tools. The heuristic is tested on many example problems, and compared to competing solution approaches. Overall, the heuristic performance is observed to be very good on the tested problem, and superior to the max-min heuristic regarding both efficiency, and performance.