Maintenance Scheduling for Multicomponent Equipment

Abstract

The problem investigated is the scheduling of preventive and opportunistic maintenance or replacement for equipment with more than one component under conditions of positive failure costs and increasing failure rates for all components. Dynamic programming models are presented for determining optimal policies for two and three component equipment. The resulting optimal policies are compared to commonly used policies and the often substantial diseconomies of such policies are illustrated. The (n,N) policies are found to be near-optimal under a wide range of opportunistic/preventive maintenance costs and failure rates for two and three component equipment. An approach for developing simple (n,N) policies for many component equipment is suggested.