Optimum component test plans for systems with dependent components

An unrealistic and very restrictive assumption of component testing models in the literature is the stochastic independence of the components. The independence assumption is hardly true for a complex system where all components operate under the same environmental conditions which may change randomly in time. We consider such a model where stochastic dependence is due to the common environment that all components of the system are subjected to. In particular, we concentrate on component testing and show that most of the results in the literature can be extended to our general model involving dependent components.