Stochastic comparison of age-dependent block replacement policies (Q2433246)

Under the age-dependent block replacement policy, a failed component is replaced with a new one with probability \(\alpha \) and minimally repaired with probability \(1 - \alpha \). Here a minimal repair restores the failed component back to a working condition that is as good as it was just before failure. At each maintenance epoch \(kZ, k \geq 1\), a component is replaced with a new one only when its age exceeds a fixed threshold \(T\), and remains working otherwise. The author obtains several maintenance comparison results on the age-dependent block replacement policy with different parameters, and shows that this policy, although more cost effective than the block replacement policy, yields more failures than the age and block replacement policies by any time \(t\).