Age Replacement In Simple Systems With Increasing Loss Functions

Some age replacement policies are investigated and conditions for the unique existence of an optimum policy are derived. The optimum policy is the one which minimizes the expected cost per unit time over an infinite time span or maximizes the proportion of time during which the system is in operation. Losses have been expressed through increasing operating cost, if the objective is to minimize the expected total cost per unit time and through increasing renewal times if the objective is to maximize the availability of the system.