Abstract:
Management decisions regarding maintenance protocols critically hinge on the underlying probability distribution of the time between failures in most repairable systems. Replacement of the system with a new one resets the system age to zero, whereas a repair does not alter the system age but may shift the parameters of the failure-time distribution. Additionally, maintenance decisions lead to left-truncated observations, and right-censored observations. Thus, the underlying stochastic process governing a repairable system evolves based on the management decision taken.