Burn-In For Avoiding Large Risks Under Heterogeneous Populations

摘要

Burn-in is a method of elimination of initial failures of manufactured items. To burn-in a component or a system means to subject it to a period of 'simulated operation' prior to actual field use. Various optimal burn-in problems have been intensively studied in the literature under the assumption of decreasing or bathtub-shaped failure rates of items. Most of these studies have been conducted for homogeneous populations. In this paper, we discuss burn-in for heterogeneous populations and develop approaches that should help to minimize the risks of selecting items with large levels of individual failure rates for missions of high importance, where failures can result, e.g., in substantial economic losses. Using simple examples, we consider the optimal burn-in time which minimizes average losses for different criteria.