Maximum product of spacings under a generalized Type-II progressive hybrid censoring scheme

This paper proposes a new estimation method based on the maximum product of spacings for estimating unknown parameters of the three-parameter Weibull distribution under a generalized Type-II progressive hybrid censoring scheme which guarantees a constant number of observations and an appropriate experiment duration. The proposed approach is appropriate for a situation where the maximum likelihood estimation is invalid, especially, when the shape parameter is less than unity. Furthermore, it presents the enhanced performance in terms of the bias through the Monte Carlo simulation. In particular, the superiority of this approach is revealed even under the condition where the maximum likelihood estimation satisfies the classical asymptotic properties. Finally, to illustrate the practical application of the proposed approach, the real data analysis is conducted, and the superiority of the proposed method is demonstrated through a simple goodness-of-fit test.