Burn-In Programs for Repairable Systems

Burn-in programs are often used for automotive or airplane engines in order to eliminate early failures due to ineffective adjustments and similar repairable sources of failure. We assume that there are two operating states: Good and Poor. Each has its own reliability characteristic, and neither necessarily has any statistical property that improves with bum-in. The purpose of the bum-in program is to uncover the Poor engines and then to repair them to the Good state. We calculate the mean time to failure of such engines when a burn-in program is used and derive conditions under which a burn-in program is justified.