On Mean Residual Life of Discrete Time Multi-State Systems

Abstract

The mean residual life function is an important characteristic in reliability and survival analysis. Although many papers have studied the mean residual life of binary systems, the study of this characteristic for multi-state systems is new. In this paper, we study mean residual life of discrete time multi-state systems that have M + 1 states of working efficiency. In particular, we consider two different definitions of mean residual life function and evaluate them assuming that the degradation in multi-state system follows a Markov process.