Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 August 2002
We study the evolution of a multi-component system which is modeled by a semi-Markov process. We give formulas for the avaibility and the reliability of the system. In the r-positive case, we prove that the quasi-stationary probability on the working states is the normalised left eigenvector of some computable matrix and that the asymptotic failure rate is equal to the absolute value of the convergence parameter r.