Indian Journal of Science and Technology

Abstract

Evaluation of system reliability in stochastic flow networks under time constraints depends on the transmission time of minimal paths. The lead-time of a minimal path plays an important role in calculating the transmission time. Component assignments not only affect on the lead-time of a path but also the reliability value. Components assignment problem subject to total lead-time is never discussed. Thus, this paper focuses on solving this problem under total-lead time constraint, in which each component has an assignment lead-time. Subsequently an optimization method based on genetic algorithm is proposed to search the optimal components for a minimum total lead-time that maximizes the system reliability. The mathematical programming formulation for the assignment problem with optimal network reliability subject to total lead-time is formulated and solved by the presented genetic algorithm. The presented algorithm is applied on two given examples with different number of available components to assert its efficiency in solving the given assignment problem.
Keywords: Component Assignment Problem, Genetic Algorithm, Stochastic-Flow Network (SFN), System Reliability, Total Lead-Time