Burn-in optimization under reliability and capacity restrictions

Burn-in is a method to screen out early failures of electronic components. The burn-in problems that minimize the system life-cycle cost have been investigated reasonably well in many applications, but physical constraints during the decision process have not been considered. The authors search for optimal burn-in time and develop a cost-optimization model. Two types of constraint are to be satisfied during decision making: (1) the minimum system reliability requirement, and (2) the maximum capacity available for burn-in. Guidelines are suggested for making burn-in decisions. An example is given to illustrate a practical application. The model generalizes the burn-in problems that were oversimplified in a previous study