A model for early life availability growth of a system of systems

Modeling is important to support decisions within a reliability growth program. Modern technologies and reliability management present interesting challenges for the manner in which we approach growth modeling. For example: performance might be framed as availability and not just reliability; improvement during early design or early operational life may be more meaningful than just during development test; the need to model at a system, or even system of systems, level may be required to support meaningful decisions. This paper presents a model motivated by the need to represent uncertainties in the availability growth of an off-shore wind farm during its warranty period. The presentation will describe this particular model in more depth as well as discussing more general challenges of reliability growth.