Simulation based analysis and an application to an offshore oil and gas production system of the Natvig measures of component importance in repairable systems

In the present paper the Natvig measures of component importance for repairable systems, and its extended version are analyzed for two three-component systems and a bridge system. The measures are also applied to an offshore oil and gas production system. According to the extended version of the Natvig measure a component is important if both by failing it strongly reduces the expected system uptime and by being repaired it strongly reduces the expected system downtime. The results include a study of how different distributions affect the ranking of the components. All numerical results are computed using discrete event simulation. In a companion paper [Huseby AB, Eide KA, Isaksen SL, Natvig B, Gåsemyr, J. Advanced discrete event simulation methods with application to importance measure estimation. 2009, submitted for publication] the advanced simulation methods needed in these calculations are described.