Warranty Claims Data Analysis Considering Sales Delay

4 Sales delay is the time interval from the date of manufacture to the date of sale. In analysing 5 warranty claims data, the existing research relating to the sales delay has mainly focused 6 on estimating the probability distribution of the sales delay. Longer sales delay may lead 7 to more warranty claims as it can have an impact on the post-sale reliability of products. 8 However, research into this problem has received little attention. 9 This paper estimates the expected number of warranty claims under both renewing and 10 non-renewing warranty policies taking into account the sales delay. We consider the case 11 with three states, the sales delay state, the operating state and the failed state. We extend 12 the three state case into an n state system case, where n ≥ 3. We then give numerical exam13 ples to demonstrate the application of the derived equations. We also present a simulation 14 and a case study were we estimate the reliability of products with three states. 15