Sequential Stopping Rules for Fixed-Sample Acceptance Tests

The occurrence of early failures in a fixed-sample acceptance test, where the sample observations are obtained sequentially, presents an interesting decision problem. I t may be desirable to abandon the test a t an early stage if the conditional probability of passing is small and the testing cost is high. This paper presents a stopping rule based on the maximum-likelihood estimate of total costs involved in the decision to continue beyond an early failure. A Bernoulli model, an exponential model, and a Weibull model are examined.