Abstract
This study addresses existing gaps in collaborative-warranty research for mission-cycle systems, especially the risk–responsibility asymmetry between manufacturers and heterogeneous users. Major drawbacks in prior models include neglected user-usage heterogeneity, static assumptions regarding manufacturers’ repair capabilities, and inadequate post-threshold compensation mechanisms. This paper proposes a dual-threshold collaborative warranty incorporating usage and repair heterogeneity (DTCW-URH) to mitigate such asymmetry. Under this framework, dual thresholds categorize users into light-type and heavy-type groups. A repair-learning mechanism is embedded, enabling manufacturers to improve repair efficiency using pre-threshold repair data. Furthermore, a dual-layer compensation framework is established, covering one-time failure compensation and two-stage downtime-loss compensation for delayed repairs, to re-balance the asymmetric loss-bearing responsibilities of both parties. Guided by reliability and probability theory, pre-threshold and post-threshold cost and period metrics are derived, and multiple limit warranty models are developed via parameter constraints. A profit-oriented pricing model is constructed by combining user segmentation, Softmax-derived purchase-selection probabilities, and the Cobb–Douglas function. Numerical analyses verify the validity of the proposed framework. This research offers a targeted warranty-phase reliability-management solution for mission-cycle systems, balancing costs and risks for both manufacturers and users.