Maintenance cost assessment for heterogeneous multi-component systems incorporating perfect inspections and waiting time to maintenance

Abstract: Most existing research about complex systems maintenance assumes they consist of the same type of components. However, systems can be assembled with heterogeneous components (for example degrading and non-degrading components) that require different maintenance actions. Since industrial systems become more and more complex, more research about the maintenance of systems with heterogeneous components is needed. For this reason, in this paper, a system consisting of two groups of components: degrading and non-degrading components is analyzed. The main novelty of this paper is the evaluation of a maintenance policy at system-level coordinating condition-based maintenance for the degrading components, delay time to the maintenance and an inspection strategy for this heterogeneous system. To that end, an analytic cost model is built using the semi-regenerative processes theory. Furthermore, a safety constraint related to the reliability of the degrading components is imposed. To find the optimal maintenance strategy, meta-heuristic algorithms are used.