Optimal Switching Decisions in a Degrading Standby System with Switching Time Redundancy

Switching time redundancy plays a critical role in optimizing standby systems, as it can enhance both system reliability and economic performance. After the failure of the primary component, a redundancy time window exists during which the standby component does not need to be activated immediately, as long as the switch occurs within this window. Such systems are commonly observed in engineering applications such as power supply systems and reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). This paper develops a two-component warm standby system model that incorporates switching time redundancy. Based on this model, we propose an integrated strategy that combines preventive shutdown and delayed switching. This strategy takes full advantage of the redundancy time to reduce wear on the standby component and extend the overall system lifetime. Furthermore, the expected operating cost—a key performance indicator—is derived, and an optimization framework is established to determine the optimal switching threshold. Finally, the limitations of this study are discussed, and future work will include comparisons with existing strategies and numerical experiments to evaluate the superiority of the proposed approach.