Combining preventive replacement and burn‐in procedures

This paper considers a non‐homogeneous population of items. Most of the items fail due to a wear‐out process. Therefore it is reasonable to employ a procedure of preventive maintenance. Some items, however, are of short life due to intrinsic defects. When used as replacement parts they may spoil results of planned prevention. The paper seeks for equilibrium of burn‐in and preventive replacement periods. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.