Optimum burn-in time of sporting and recreational equipment

In this research we present two approaches for determining the optimal burn-in time of recreational equipment. By incorporating renewal reward theory into a sporting equipment, we derive the long-term expected cost per unit time. The cost of production is affected by the required burn-in time. It would therefore help to have a proper model of burn-in time when developing a quality control strategy. We show that, under certain conditions, a finite and unique optimum policy exists. In particular, two kinds of solutions are discussed. One is a straightforward procedure and the other is a geometric approach based on the Total Time on Test concept. A graphical solution for deriving the optimal inspection time is proposed and the optimal policies are obtained directly from real data.