An engineering approach to optimize system design and spare parts inventory

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to show how the stochastic Petri nets, commonly used in reliability field to model the functional and dysfunctional behaviour of industrial systems and to assess their dependability, are also able to give some interesting information on their global performance, which can be exploited from a technical and economical point of view. By this way the Petri nets can be used, in some cases, to identify the best configuration of system being under design and to determine the right number of spares to be kept in store. Thus, this engineering approach could be an alternative to optimization methods.