A geometric process maintenance model (Q1879113)

The author models a maintained system by its successive operating times and its consecutive repair times. The system is said to be deteriorating (respectively, improving) if the successive operating times are stochastically decreasing (respectively, increasing), and the consecutive repair times are stochastically increasing (respectively, decreasing). Suppose that the system is replaced by an identical new one following the \(N\)th failure time. The author models the successive operating times and the consecutive repair times as two geometric processes, and he finds the optimal \(N\) that minimizes the long-run average cost per unit time. For a deteriorating system, the monotonicity of the optimal \(N\) in the various parameters of the model is also considered.