Integrated Factors Method (IFM): A new reliability allocation technique

In engineering, safety factors and redundancies are often adopted to guarantee the component and installation reliability. Troubles or disasters suggest the right modifications in components or installations to guarantee the wanted system reliability. In the last few years, some analysis methods are developing to estimate beforehand components reliability, availability, maintainability and safety (R.A.M.S.), and to put out their weak points during the plan phase, in order to adopt the right actions. The system reliability represents both the start and the finish point of R.A.M.S. analysis: we are interested in the single sub-system reliability to obtain the whole system reliability (reliability research techniques); we can fix the system reliability value and then estimate single component performances, obtaining the most critical sub-systems in terms of reliability (system design). In the second case we speak of reliability allocation techniques; they permit to assign reliability parameters to the different system units, in this way the whole system reaches the established reliability target. One of the principal advantages coming out from the adoption of reliability allocation techniques is the time and cost saving. In literature, there isn't a universal technique, correct for every system and every design state; so the research of the correct methodology for the observed system is a task of R.A.M.S. analysis. Starting from the analysis of the literature methodologies, we have developed a new reliability allocation method: Integrated Factors Method (IFM).