A Study on the Experimental Design for the Lifetime Performance Index of Rayleigh Lifetime Distribution under Progressive Type I Interval Censoring

With the rapid development of technology, improving product life performance has become a very important issue in recent decades. The lifetime performance index is used in this research for the assessment of the lifetime performance of products following the Rayleigh distribution. Based on the hypothesis testing procedure with this index, using the maximum likelihood estimator as a testing statistic, the sampling design is determined and the related values are tabulated for practical use to reach the given power level and minimize the total experimental cost under progressive type I interval censoring. When the inspection interval length is fixed and the number of inspection intervals is not fixed, the required number of inspection intervals and sample size with the minimum total cost are determined and tabulated. When the termination time is not fixed, the required number of inspection intervals, sample size and equal interval length reaching the minimum total cost are determined and tabulated. Lastly, a practical example is given to illustrate the use of this sampling design for the testing procedure to determine whether the process is capable.