Cost benefit analysis of series systems with warm standby components
This paper deals with the cost benefit analysis of series systems with warm standby components. The time-to-repair and the time-to-failure for each of the primary and warm standby components is assumed to have the negative exponential distribution. We develop the explicit expressions for the mean time-to-failure, MTTF, and the steady-state availability, AT(∞) for three configurations and perform a comparative analysis. Under the cost/benefit (C/B) criterion, comparisons are made based on assumed numerical values given to the distribution parameters, and to the cost of the components. The configurations are ranked based on: MTTF, AT(∞), and C/B where B is either MTTF or AT(∞).
Modeling and comparison of the series systems with imperfect coverage for an unreliable server
In this paper, we investigate the availability of two different series system configurations with imperfect coverage, where an unreliable server is responsible for maintaining the system. The primary and standby components are included in both series system configurations. The time-to-failure of the primary and standby components are exponentially distributed. When the server is repairing, it is subject to random breakdown. The time-to-breakdown of the server is assumed to have exponential distribution. The standby components will substitute for the primary components whenever the primary components fail. The recovery from standby to active is imperfect. The coverage factors for primary component failure and for standby component failure are assumed to be the same as c. The repair time of the failed components and the repair time of the breakdown server are generally distributed. Further, we implement a practical model with two different repairable system configurations. By supplementary variable technique, we derive the steady-state availability of these two different series system configurations. Finally, we compare the cost/benefit ratio between two configurations and the availability in the different pairs of the component’s repair time and server’s repair time distributions.
Letting Women in? Gender Mainstreaming in Regional Policies
Gender mainstreaming has over the last ten years become the dominant strategy of integrating gender issues in public policy. This article presents regional policy as a broad and increasingly important policy field to study, and analyses gender mainstreaming in this policy field in the Norwegian and the Swedish contexts. How do problem representations surrounding “gender equality” and “gender mainstreaming” produce meanings of gender as well as construct possibilities for change? The article shows that, despite some differences between the two countries, gender mainstreaming in regional policy can to a large extent be read as meaning “women”. Women are in this context given a narrow subject position and are constructed as lacking what it takes to produce sustainable regional growth. The concluding discussion highlights the relations between the implementation of gender mainstreaming and neo‐liberal political trends.