Age replacement policy for heterogeneous parallel systems

Abstract

The optimization policy on age replacement mostly focuses on systems comprised of identical components. In this paper, both discrete and continuous time age replacement policies are considered by relaxing the assumption of identical components and working with heterogeneous parallel system, i.e. system with not necessarily identical components. In particular, necessary conditions are obtained for the existence and uniqueness of optimal replacement cycle/time for the parallel system with two nonidentical components under the proposed policy. The extension of the results to a system with more than two components is also presented.