Variables acceptance reliability sampling plan based on degradation test

Abstract

Until now, various acceptance reliability sampling plans have been developed based on different life tests. In most of the reliability sampling plans, the decision procedures are based on the lifetimes of the items observed on tests, or the number of failures observed during a pre-specified testing time. However, frequently, the items are subject to degradation phenomena and, in these cases, the observed degradation level of the item can be used as a decision statistic. In this paper, assuming the gamma degradation process, we develop a variables acceptance sampling plan based on the information on the degradation process of the items. It is shown that the developed sampling plan improves the reliability performance of the items conditional on the acceptance in the test and that the lifetimes of items after the reliability sampling test are stochastically larger than those before the test. A study comparing the proposed degradation-based sampling plan with the conventional sampling plan which is based on a life test is also performed. © 2020, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.