A preventive maintenance and replacement policy of a series system with failure interaction

Abstract

This article considers when preventive maintenance (PM) and replacement should be implemented for a repairable series system with failure interaction. Under the main assumption that the system gradually deteriorates with time, the modified sequential method is proposed to determine an optimal PM and replacement policy for the system based on minimizing expected cost per unit operation time. According to this method, PM epochs are determined one after the other, and consequently we can make use of all previous information on the system's operation process. Also, the replacement epoch depends on the PM's effective length. A property of the cost function with respect to both PM and replacement is discussed.

Keywords:

• corrective maintenance
• preventive maintenance
• replacement
• modified sequential method
• failure interaction
• cost

Acknowledgements

The study described in this article was fully supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. 9040563).