A new domain-independent method for improving reliability and reducing risk based on exploiting asymmetry

The paper introduces a new, powerful, domain-independent method for improving reliability and reducing risk by exploiting asymmetry, along with a classification of corresponding techniques. A system reliability improvement technique has been proposed based on asymmetric arrangement of redundancies which is not associated with any implementation costs and can be used for improving reliability and reducing the risk of failure in various unrelated domains. Despite the extensive research on redundancy optimisation, no existing technique has yet addressed the problem without requiring knowledge of component reliabilities. This paper demonstrates that system reliability can be improved without any knowledge of components’ reliability values. Specifically, it establishes that for series-parallel systems, an asymmetric arrangement of interchangeable redundancies consistently results in higher system reliability compared to a symmetric arrangement, regardless of the individual reliability values of the components. This result has been obtained through reverse engineering of a rigorously proved algebraic inequality. Finally, the paper proposes a new technique for reducing risk by exploiting an asymmetric non-linear output from a process. This technique has also been obtained through a reverse engineering of a rigorously proved algebraic inequality. The technique is also applicable to improving the performance of systems and processes with nonlinear concave output in various unrelated domains.