Applications of average and projected systems to the study of coherent systems

In this paper, we introduce the concepts of average and projected systems associated to a coherent (parent) system. We analyze several aspects of these notions and show that they can be useful tools in studying the performance of coherent systems with non-exchangeable components. We show that the average and projected systems are especially useful in studying the tail behavior of reliability, hazard rate and mean residual life functions of the parent system and also in obtaining the tail best systems (under different criteria) by permuting the components at the system structure. Moreover, they can be useful in assessing how the asymmetry of the joint distribution of the component lifetimes (with respect to permutations of the components in the system structure) affects the system performance. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved