A priority multi-component system with spares

A system with n similar components in series with constant failure rates and m spares in warm standby supported by a single repair facility is studied. The repair time distributions of on-line and standby failures are taken to be different and arbitrary. Two models, one with pre-emptive repeat priority and another with non-pre-emptive priority are discussed. Equations for the reliability and availability functions are obtained for both cases and earlier results are recovered as special cases of the non-pre-emptive model. © 1987.