A manufacturer has a machine that, when operational at the beginning of a day, has a probability of 0.1 of breaking down sometime during the day. When this happens, the repair is done the next day and completed at the end of that day.
(a) Formulate the evolution of the status of the machine as a Markov chain by identifying three possible states at the end of each day, and then constructing the (one-step) transition matrix.
(b) Use the approach described in Sec. 29.6 to find the µij (the expected first passage time from state i to state j) for all i and j. Use these results to identify the expected number of full days that the machine will remain operational before the next breakdown after a repair is completed.
(c) Now suppose that the machine already has gone 20 full days without a breakdown since the last repair was completed. How does the expected number of full days hereafter that the machine will remain operational before the next breakdown compare with the corresponding result from part (b) when the repair had just been completed? Explain.