A general inspection and opportunistic replacement policy for one-component systems of variable quality

摘要

Highlights?The proposed policy combines inspection and preventive and opportunistic replacements.?Two policy variations are studied, a general one and a simplification.?The simpler policy is recommended for practical implementation.?Opportunities are particularly useful when inspections are relatively uninformative.AbstractWe model the influence of opportunities in a hybrid inspection and replacement policy. The base policy has two phases: an initial inspection phase in which the system is replaced if found defective; and a later wear-out phase that terminates with replacement and during which there is no inspection. The efficacy of inspection is modelled using the delay time concept. Onto this base model, we introduce events that arise at random and offer opportunities for cost-efficient replacement, and we investigate the efficacy of additional opportuni