An extended model for optimal burn-in procedures

In this paper, the problem of determining optimal burn-in time is considered under the general failure model. There are two types of failure in the general failure model. One is Type I failure (minor failure) which can be removed by a minimal repair, and the other is Type II failure (catastrophic failure) which can be removed only by a complete repair. In the researches on optimal burn-in, the assumption of a bathtub shaped failure rate function is commonly adopted. In this paper, upper bounds for optimal burn-in times are obtained under a more general assumption on the shape of the failure rate function, which includes the bathtub shaped failure rate function as a special case.