Group replacement

As per this strategy, an optimal group replacement period ‘P‘ is determined and common preventivereplacement is carried out as follows.

(a)Replacement an item if it fails before the optimum period ‘P‘.

(b)Replace all the items every optimum period of ‘P‘ irrespective of the life of individual item. Examples: Bulbs, Tubes, and Switches.

Among the three strategies that may be adopted, the third one namely the group replacement policy turns out to be economical if items

are supplied cheap when purchased in bulk quantities. With this policy, all items are replaced at certain fixed intervals. The optimum

interval can be worked out as illustrated in the example to follow.

Example:

The following mortality rates have been observed for a certain electric bulb.
Week 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Percentage failure
by end of week 5 13 25 43 68 88 96 100

There are 1000 bulbs in a factory and it costs Rs. 400 to replace and individual bulb, which has burnt out. If all bulbs were replaced

simultaneously, it would cost Re. 1 per bulb. It is proposed to replace all bulbs at  fixed intervals, whether or not they have burnt out,

and to continue replacing burnt out bulbs as they fail. At what intervals should all the bulbs be replaced?

Solution:

We make two assumptions in solving the problem.

(1)The bulbs that fail during a week are replaced before the end of the week.

(2)The actual probability of failures during a week for a subpopulation of the bulbs with the same age is the same as the probability of

failure during the week for that sub-population.

Let Pi be the probability that a bulb newly installed fails during the ith week of its life. This can be obtained from mortality table shown

below in table 9.

Table 9
End of the 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
week
Probability of
failure during 0.05 0.08 0.1 0.18 0.25 0.20 0.0 0.04
2 8
the ith week

Now, we calculate the number of bulbs that fail during a particular week and require replacement.

If the policy is to replace all the bulbs simultaneously every week the cost of installation of 1000 bulbs at the rate of Re. 1 per bulb is

rate of Rs. 4 per bulb. Then the cost of replaced bulbs = Rs. 200. Total cost per week = Rs. 1200.
If all the bulbs were replaced at the end of two weeks, the cost of new bulbs for group replacement is Rs. 1000 and the number of bulbs

to be replaced during first two weeks would be 133 and the cost for the same is 133 x4 =Rs. 532. Total cost would be Rs. 1532. This

expenditure is spread over a period of two weeks. Hence the average cost per week would be Rs. 766, which is less than that if the policy

is to replace the bulbs every week.

Extending the same logic, if the policy would be to replace all bulbs once in three weeks, the cost would be Rs. 1000 + 261 x 4 = Rs. 2044.

Hence the average cost per week would be Rs. 681. We try for the time period of four weeks and the cost would be Rs. 1000 + 1044 + 796

= Rs. 2840. Thus we see that the average cost per week is Rs. 710 which is more than that incurred for the policy to replace the bulbs

once in three weeks. Hence the optimum period of group replacement is three weeks.

In the above analysis it was assumed to adopt the policy of group replacement and the fixed interval ofreplacement was three weeks. But

we have to examine the policy if we replace bulbs as and when they fail (without group replacement). For this the average life of the

bulb is to be calculated. Multiplying the probability can do this and the corresponding life of the bulb for all the possible cases and add

them up.

Thus we have the expected life of a bulb would be (0.05 x 1) + (0.08 x 2) + (0.12 x 3) + (0.18 x 4) +

(0.25 x 5) + (0.20 x 6) +(0.08 x 7) + (0.04 x   = 4.62 weeks. Hence the number of replacement of bulbs per week would be 1000/4.62 =

216 bulbs which would cost Rs. 864, at the rate of Rs. 4 per bulb. This is more than what we had in group replacement (cost Rs. 681).

Hence we conclude that the group replacement policy is better and replace all bulbs at required interval of three weeks.

EXERCISES

1. The following failure rates have been observed for certain type of light bulb.
End of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
week
prob. of
failure
to date 0.0 0.13 0.25 0.43 0.68 0.88 0.9 1.00
5 6

There are 1000 light bulbs in a factory. The cost of replacing an individual bulb is Rs. 500. If the cost of groupreplacement is Rs. 1.20

what is the best interval between group replacements?

2. A computing machine has a large number of electronic tubes, each of which has a life normally distributed with a mean of 1200 hrs.

with a standard deviation of 160 hrs. Assume the machine is in operation for two shifts (2 x 8 = 16 hrs.) per day. If all the tubes were to

be replaced at fixed interval, the cost is Rs. 30 for a tube.Replacement of individual tubes, which fail in service, would cost Rs. 80 for

labour and parts plus the cost of computer downtime, which runs about Rs. 800 for an average tube failure. How frequently all tubes be

replaced?