Warranty claim analysis considering human factors

2 Shaomin Wu 1 3 Cranfield University, School of Applied Sciences, Cranfield, Bedfordshire MK43 0AL, UK 4 5 Abstract 6 Warranty claims are not always due to product failures. They can also be caused by two types of human 7 factors. On the one hand, consumers might claim warranty due to misuse and/or failures caused by other human 8 factors. Such claims might account for more than 10% of all reported claims; on the other hand, consumers 9 might not be bothered to claim warranty for failed items that are still under warranty, or claim warranty after 10 they have experienced several intermittent failures. These two types of human factors can affect warranty claim 11 costs. However, research in this area has received rather little attention. 12 In this paper, we propose three models to estimate the expected warranty cost when the two types of 13 human factors are included. We consider two types of failures, intermittent and fatal failures, which might result 14 in different claim patterns. Consumers might report claims after a fatal failure has occurred, and upon 15 intermittent failures they might report claims after a number of failures have occurred. Numerical examples are 16 given to validate the results derived. 17