Cost Effective Burn-In and Replacement Times

Bum-in and replacement policies have been used to reduce the cost of maintaining a system function. Existing solutions to the burn-in and the combined burn-in, replacement problems are typically difficult to apply. A simpler solution to this problem is given. The only distributional property required is the reliability function. Thus either parametric or nonparametric estimates of reliability can be used in the solution. The nonparametric solution is appealing in the case of a combined burn-in and replacement policy because the U shaped failure rate makes parametric estimation of reliability difficult.