Importance measure based optimal maintenance policy for deteriorating components

An optimal maintenance policy for deteriorating components based on quasi renew-process model is presented. In this policy, the first N-1 failures of a component are maintained by repairs and the N^th failure is maintained by replacement. The policy takes replacement actions at component level by considering the fact that more and more components are designed to be field replaceable and maintenance activities are setting free from system halt. Concerning system structure impact, importance measure is employed in the optimization procedure which aims at maximizing the long-run profit per unit time. Two example series parallel systems are taken to illustrate the policy and it is proved to work well. According to importance analysis, components are classified into important ones and unimportant ones based on the system behavior under their failures. Simulation results show that the presented policy makes a clear distinction between them and takes effective maintenance actions to compensate the deteriorating of components.