AbstractThis paper provides an easily computable one parameter inspection policy for the detection of the failure of a system when the time to failure of the system follows a gamma distribution. This one parameter inspection policy, as suggested by Munford and Shahani, compares fairly well with a computationally difficult optimal policy suggested by Barlow, Hunter and Proschan. Necessary tables are provided for the "optimal" parameter for a wide range of the parameters of the problem, from which the successive inspection times can be computed easily.