A heuristic algorithm for determining replacement policies in consecutive k-out-of-n systems

This article presents a heuristic algorithm for determining replacement policies in a discrete-time, infinite-horizon, dynamic programming model of a binary coherent system with n statistically independent components, and then specializes the algorithm to consecutive k-out-of-n systems. Costs arise when the system fails and when failed components are replaced. The objective is to minimize the long run expected average undiscounted cost per period. A companion article (Naval Res. Logistics 49 (2002) 288) develops a branch and bound algorithm for computing optimal policies. Extensive computational experiments on consecutive k-out-of-n systems find it effective when n 40 or k is near n; however, the computations can be intractable when n>40 and 2 k