Title: Developing a trade-off between upgrade action time and warranty length for second-hand electrical components

Authors: Mahmood Shafiee, Mohammad Saidi-Mehrabad, Ezzatollah Asgharizadeh

Addresses: Department of Industrial Engineering, Islamic Azad University, Abhar Branch, P.O. Box 4561934367, Abhar, Iran. ' Department of Industrial Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, P.O. Box 16846-13114, Tehran, Iran. ' Department of Industrial Management, University of Tehran, P.O. Box 14155-6311, Tehran, Iran

Abstract: One way of improving the reliability and reducing the warranty servicing cost for second-hand items is through actions such as overhaul and upgrade which are carried out by the dealer or a third party. For second-hand electrical components, the improvement involves testing of items for a short time, called upgrade action time, before their release to the market. The items that fail during the test are scrapped or repaired; only items that survive the test are considered to be of good quality and released to the market. In this paper, a cost model is developed to achieve a trade-off between reducing the warranty servicing cost and increasing the upgrade action cost for a second-hand electrical component sold under various warranty policies.

Keywords: expected warranty cost; second-hand products; total mean cost; trade-off; upgrade action time; warranty length; electrical components; product warranty; product reliability; warranty servicing cost; upgrade action cost; warranty policies.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPD.2010.036395

International Journal of Product Development, 2010 Vol.12 No.3/4, pp.336 - 351

Published online: 02 Nov 2010 *

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