Optimal preventive replacement policy for operating products with renewing free-replacement warranty

Abstract

This paper investigates the optimal preventive replacement policy for products with random work under a renewing free-replacement warranty (RFRW). To model an imperfect maintenance action when the product fails, we consider that the failed product undergoes minimal repairs at minor failures and corrective replacements at catastrophic failures. Before catastrophic failures, the product is planned to replace preventively at age T or at the completion of a working time, whichever occurs first. For both warranted and non-warranted products, preventive replacement models from customer’s perspective are developed, and the optimal schedules of age-replacement that minimize the mean cost rate functions are derived. The effects of a product warranty on the optimal preventive replacement model are investigated analytically and computed numerically. It can be seen that the proposed model is a generalization of the previous works in maintenance theory.

Keywords:

• Warranty
• maintenance
• age-replacement
• random-replacement
• minimal repair
• optimization

Acknowledgment

The author would like to thank the referees for their insightful comments and suggestions, which greatly enhanced the clarity of the article. All of the suggestions were incorporated directly in the text.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan, ROC, under Grant No. MOST108-2410-H-147-006.