The object of the study is to find out both the transient state and
steady state behaviour of the system, and, on the basis of this
information to derive the most important reliability
characteristics (i.e. reliability, availability and mean time to system
failure MTSF) for the system. The behaviour of the system is
described by state prababilities, a state (at time t) giving the number
of failed components at that time. The system must have a little
different state definition for availability analysis than for
reliability analysis. This means that there also will be two separate
models, one for the availability and another for the reliability and
MTSF analysis of the system.
(Proceedings of The Turku School of Economics and Business Administration, Series A-12:1976, 15 p.)