Abstract: | An inspection model in life testing situations is discussed. The system under study is assumed to consist on n independent components all of which fail independently in an exponential fashion. Failures can be discovered only through inspection. The experimenter is assumed to lack the knowledge of the parameter of the exponential distribution. A stochastic sequential inspection policy is suggested which uses the data collected through experimentation to estimate the unknown parameter. It is shown that this policy is asymptotically optimal. Some numerical demonstrations are included. |