Abstract: An initial and maintenance cost of each component as well as a period over which to determine a total ownership cost is received. It is then ascertained whether each failed component should be repaired or replaced, and whether any component related to a failed component should be maintained. A supplier and associated initial cost is then selected for each component. The failure of each component over the period is predicted. A total ownership cost of the system is then determined by summing each component's initial cost and the maintenance cost of each failed component. The method may then repeat itself for a different supplier and associated different initial cost, until the total ownership cost is the same as or less than a target total ownership cost. The total ownership cost or a list of preferred suppliers and their associated components may then be displayed to the user.

Abstract: The invention regards a system reliability or failure predicting apparatus and method that incorporates known information about system component failure into a system model and uses the model with or without other acquired system data to predict the probability of system failure. An embodiment of the method includes using probabilistic methods to create a system failure model from the failure models of individual system components, predicting the failure of the system based on the component models and system data, ranking the sensitivity of the system to the system variables, and communicating a failure prediction.