Optimal replacement policy for a periodically inspected system subject to the competing soft and sudden failures

This paper analyzes a replacement problem for a continuously degrading system which is periodically inspected and subject to the competing risk of soft and sudden failures. The system should be correctively replaced by a new one upon failure, or it could be preventively replaced before failure due to safety and economic considerations. Dependent soft and sudden failures are considered. The degradation process of the system observed by inspections exhibits a monotone increasing pattern and is described by a gamma process. The failure rate of the sudden failure is characterized by its dependency on the system age and the degradation state. By formulating the optimization problem in a semi-Markov decision process framework, the specific form of the optimal replacement policy which minimizes the long-run expected average cost per unit time is found, considering a cost structure that includes the cost for inspections, the cost for preventive replacement, and the costs for different failure modes. The corresponding computational algorithm to obtain the optimal replacement policy is also developed. A real data set is utilized to illustrate the application of the optimal replacement policy.