Problem Solving:

8
0
9
.
4
P (warning)
Assignment 4.1
PRODUCT AND SERVICE DESIGN

1. A hospital has three independent firm alarm systems, with reliabilities of .90, .95,
and .99. In the event of a fire, what is the probability that a warning would be
given?

 If all three alarms failed, no warning would be issued. The probability that at least
one alarm would operate is 1-P (none operate):

P (none operate) = (1-0.95) (1-0.97) (1-0.99)

= 0.000015

= 1-0.000015
= 0.999985

2. Due to the extreme cost of interrupting production, a firm has two standby
machines available in case a particular machine breaks down. The machine in
use has a reliability of .94, and the backups have reliabilities of .90 and .80. In
the event of a failure, either backup can be pressed into service. If one fails, the
other backup can be used. Compute the system reliability.

R1= 0.94, R2 = 0.90, and R3 = 0.80

The system can be depicted in this way:

RSystem = R1 + R2 (1-R1) + R3 (1-R2) (1-R1)

= 0.94 + 0.90 (1- 0.94) + 0.80 (1-0.90) (1-0.94)
= 0.9988

3. An office manager has received a report from a consultant that includes a

section on equipment replacement. The report indicates that scanners have a
service life that is normally distributed with a mean of 41 months and a standard
 deviation of 4 months. On the basis of this information, determine the
percentage of scanners that can be expected to fail in the following time periods:

a) Before 38 months of service.

 0.2266% or 22.66% of scanner may fail before 38 months.

b) Between 40 and 45 months of service.

Z = -0.25 from the probability corresponding to z = 100

Z = -0.25; p = 0.841345
Z = 1.00; p = 0.401294
O = 4401 0.25

 44.06 of the scanner may fail between 42 - 45 months.

4. Determine the availability for each of these cases:

a) MTBF = 40 days, average repair time = 3 days.
(40-3) / 40 = 0.93

b) MTBF = 300 hours, average repair time = 6 hours.

(300-6) / 300 = 0.98