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Abstract
Recently Nakagawa (1979) has developed an optimal replacement policy for a parallel system operating in a random environment based on the model given by Rade (1976). The optimization policy (Nakagawa 1979) uses the idea of MTBF (mean time before failure) performance and is limited to systems comprised of ‘identical units’. We observe that relaxing the assumption of identical units and working with ‘general systems’ (i.e. systems comprised of not necessarily identical components) has several operational and practical advantages (Venugopal and Ahamed 1986 a, b, Venugopal 1987). Accordingly, an optimal replacement policy for a typical general parallel system is developed in this paper. Earlier results are recovered as special cases. Illustrative numerical work highlighting the applicational scope is also presented.