OPTIMAL REPLACEMENT POLICIES FOR A BALLISTIC MISSILE
Abstract
Ballistic missile system replacement policies are discussed for equipment subject to stochastic failures in which the actual state of the system, good or failed, is not known with certainty. Although these policies are applied only to the missile itself, optimal maintenance policies for the system as a whole are conceptually similar. The criterion employed for comparison of alternative maintenance policies is to minimize the total cost per expected piece of equipment good per period of time. Maximization of system reliability is a special case of this criterion which ignores the financial costs of maintenance actions. For illustrative purposes, optimal policies are computed for a hypothetical ballistic missile system. They are then compared with each other and with a rule of thumb frequently proposed for replacement policy: Replace at the mean time to failure. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 1962
- Accession Number
- AD0276721
Entities
People
- D.w. Jorgenson
- J.j. Mccall
Organizations
- RAND Corporation