A stochastic covariate failure model for assessing system reliability

Abstract

Many failure mechanisms can be traced to an underlying deterioration process, and stochastically changing covariates may influence this process. In this paper we propose an alternative model for assessing a system's reliability. The proposed model expresses the failure time of a system in terms of a deterioration process and covariates. When it is possible to measure deterioration as well as covariates, our model provides more information than failure time for the purpose of assessing and improving system reliability. We give several properties of our proposed model and also provide an example.