Dynamic reliability decision-making frameworks: trends and opportunities

Reliability engineering and management are becoming more important as systems evolve in functionality and complexity. Given various dynamic factors influencing reliability, static one-time decision frameworks can no longer offer optimal reliability decisions. In the paper, we discuss the recent trends in reliability decision-making methods across three stages of reliability issues: reliability testing and optimization, reliability modeling and evaluation, and post-service design. We can find a growing interest in time-dependent dynamic methods in research for all these three stages. Sequential decision modeling methods, such as the Markov decision process and its extensions, can be a resort to solve these problems, while modeling and problem-solving can be quite challenging under certain circumstances. Future research holds promising opportunities in related topics.