Opportunistic preventive maintenance optimization for multi-unit series systems with combing multi-preventive maintenance techniques

This paper proposes a dynamic opportunistic preventive maintenance (PM) optimization policy for multi-unit series systems by integrating multi PM techniques. Two PM techniques, periodic PM and sequential PM, are considered. Whenever one of the units reaches its reliability threshold, a PM action has to be performed on that unit. At that time the whole system has to be stopped and PM opportunities arise for the other units of the system. An optimal PM practice is determined by maximizing the short-term cumulative opportunistic maintenance (OM) cost savings for the whole system. Numerical examples are given to show how this approach works. Finally, a comparison between the proposed PM policy and the other policies is given.