Mixtures of distributions with increasing linear failure rates

Abstract

Populations of specific components are often heterogeneous and consist of a small number of different sub-populations. For example there are often two groups: defective components with shorter lifetimes and standard components with longer lifetimes. Another heterogeneous population results when components produced by two different manufacturing lines are combined. In either case a mixture results. The resulting population can be described using the statistical concept of a mixture. It is a well-known result that a mixture of distributions with decreasing failure rates has a decreasing failure rate. However, little is known about the monotonicity of a mixture when the various subpopulations have failure rates which are not necessarily decreasing. In this paper we study and attempt to determine the shape as well as the overall behavior of the failure rate of a mixture from two subpopulations each of which has increasing linear failure rate.