Inspection-Based Policy Considering Human Errors for Three-Stage Delay Time Degradation Systems

A periodic inspection policy for a single component system based on a three-stage failure process is proposed, and two different kinds of failures covering “hard” and “human” are considered in the proposed policy. The system is periodically inspected and inspections are perfect so that they can identify the intended defect. If the severe defect is detected by an inspection, an immediate repair is needed. However, once the system is identified to be in the minor defective state, there are two options. The first is to do nothing till the arrival of identifying the severe defect or hard failure, and the second is to repair immediately. Repair for any defect can renew the system with a limited probability such that the system may fail after repair due to human errors, which is common in many industrial applications. Two models are constructed by minimizing the expected cost per unit time and compared. We provide a numerical example to demonstrate the proposed model.