Use of Replacements to Extend System Life.

摘要

This paper is concerned with the following question. A system has one vital component for which there are n spares. Whenever the vital component fails, the system fails. The authors like to schedule the replacement of the vital component with the spares so as to prolong the life of the system as much as possible. This problem can be generalized to where there are several components in the system and the scheduling of replacements refers to each of the components. They deal mainly with the first question but treat, to some extent, a special case of the second. The next to final section considers a generalization which allows for the vital component to fail a fixed number of times before causing the system to fail.