Modified age-based replacement

The maintenance policy of age-based replacement (ABR) is widely specified in OEM instructions. The practical application of ABR raises concerns about ensuring consistent adherence to prescribed replacement schedules for extended periods. ABR lacks periodicity, resulting in scheduling asynchrony with designated time slots, while alternative policies such as block replacement (BR) provide periodicity at the expense of efficiency. Additionally, scepticism about ABR is based on its simplicity and restrictive assumptions, which include ideal replacements and the one-component system assumption. The task of estimating component lifetime distributions and defining critical parameters such as cost of failure, which is an average cost with varying downtime, presents significant challenges. We study “modified age-based replacement” (MABR) in response to the limitation of periodicity, so that preventive replacements exhibit quasi-periodic behaviour. We quantify the cost-inefficiency of MABR compared to ABR, thus informing the practical implications of introducing periodicity into the ABR policy and highlighting the need to incorporate real-world constraints, such as time slots for maintenance actions. The findings indicate that MABR and a special case are reasonably efficient provided the slot-interval is not too large. This is a useful insight for practical application of ABR type policies for scheduling preventive maintenance

Delay-time modelling of a critical system subject to random inspections

We model the inspection-maintenance of a critical system in which the execution of inspections is random. The models we develop are interesting because they mimic realities in which production is prioritised over maintenance, so that inspections might be impeded or they might be opportunistic. Random maintenance has been modelled by others but there is little in the literature that relates to inspection of a critical system. We suppose that the critical system can be good, defective or failed, and that failure impacts on production, so that a failure is immediately revealed, but a defect does not. A defect, if revealed at inspection, is a trigger for replacement. We compare the cost and reliability of random inspections with scheduled periodic inspections and discuss the implications for practice. Our results indicate that inspections that are performed opportunistically rather than scheduled periodically may offer an economic advantage provided opportunities are sufficiently frequent and convenient. A hybrid inspection and replacement policy, with inspections subject to impediments, is robust to departure from its inspection schedule. Keywords: Maintenance; reliability; random inspection; production; qualit