Performance Evaluation of Infrastructure Networks with Multistate Reliability Analysis

The purpose of this paper is to present a multistate reliability approach to evaluate the performance of the infrastructure networks from the viewpoint of reliability. There are many infrastructure networks that follow the classical two-terminal network reliability problem. We present a relatively efficient algorithm to find a subset of lower boundary points and then use them to develop lower bounds on the reliability of the network. A supply chain network reliability example is given where the performance of the supply chain network is related to the lead time to meet the demands of the customer. We formulate this problem in terms of two-terminal network reliability with mutlistates where higher values of the states mean shorter lead times. The methodology can be used to evaluate design of supply chain networks. An example is given to evaluate two supply chain networks and their performances are compared using the proposed multistate reliability measures.