Comparison of the several two-parameter exponential distributed group means in the presence of outliers

Abstract

The two-parameter exponential distribution is often used to model the lifetime of a product. The comparison of the mean lifetimes of several products is a main concern in reliability applications. In this study, the performance of the methods to compare the mean lifetimes of several products based on generalized p-value, parametric bootstrap, and fiducial approach are compared in the presence of outliers. The results of Monte-Carlo simulations clearly indicate that there is no uniformly powerful test. The parametric bootstrap test is superior to the others except in the case of the lower number of groups and the presence of outliers. An illustrative example of testing the equality lifetimes of a component is given to perform the proposed tests. The considered tests are implemented in an R package doex.