GENERALIZED MULTISTATE MONOTONE COHERENT SYSTEMS

Most available models for multistate coherent systems (MCS) assume tha t the state sets of the system and its components are totally ordered - an assumption that greatly limits the application of the usual MCS m odels. This paper presents a new MCS model - a generalized multistate coherent system (GMCS) model - which assumes, more generally, that the state sets of the system and its components are partially ordered. Si nce the structure of a partially ordered set is very flexible, the mod el applies to the reliability analysis of various multistate coherent systems. As a result, the GMCS model generalizes the coherent system t heory from the binary-state case to the multistate case. We investigat e some of the properties of this generalized model. Then, system relia bility is redefined and bounds for its evaluation are derived.