Burn-in by environmental shocks for two ordered subpopulations

Abstract

Burn-in is a widely used engineering method of elimination of defective items before they are shipped to customers or put into field operation. In conventional burn-in procedures, components or systems are subject to a period of simulated operation prior to actual usage. Then those which failed during this period are scrapped and discarded. In this paper, we assume that the population of items is composed of two ordered subpopulations and the elimination of weak items by using environmental shocks is considered. Optimal severity levels of these shocks that minimize the defined expected costs are investigated. Some illustrative examples are discussed. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.