Optimal Preventive Replacement Policies for a Change of Operational Environment

사용환경의 변화에 대한 최적예방교환정책

The failure rate of an item depends on operational environment. When an item has a chance failure period and a wearout failure period in sequel, the severity of operational environment causes the increase in the slop of wearout failure rate or the increase in the magnitude of chance failure rate. For such a change of operational environment, this paper concerns the change of optimal preventive replacement time. Two preventive replacement policies, age replacement policy and periodic replacement policy with minimal repair, are considered. Investigated properties are: (a) in age replacement policy, optimal preventive replacement time increases as the chance failure rate increases and optimal preventive replacement time decreases as the slope of wearout failure rate increases, and (b) in periodic replacement policy with minimal repair, optimal preventive replacement time increases as the slope of wearout failure rate increases; however, the change of chance failure rate does not alter the optimal preventive replacement time.