Maintenance and Inspection Optimization of a System with Hidden Failures

摘要

In this paper, we consider a system with components subject to soft and hard failures. Hard failures are detected and fixed immediately, but soft failures are hidden and only rectified at periodic inspections. The objective is to find the optimal maintenance policy (minimal repair vs. replacement) for all components and the optimal periodic inspection for the whole system. We first obtain the optimal ages to replace the components with hard failures, and the optimal number of minimal repairs before replacement for the components with soft failures. We then develop a simulation model to get these optimal maintenance policies as inputs, and find the optimal periodic inspection which minimizes the total expected cost for the system over its lifecycle.