An improved selective maintenance solution approach

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to develop an improved, enumerative solution procedure for solving the original selective maintenance problems. Selective maintenance refers to the process of identifying the set of maintenance actions to perform from a desirable set of maintenance actions.

Design/methodology/approach

A series of four improvements to a previously proposed enumerative solution procedure are presented. The improvements are defined and tested sequentially on an experimental set of problem instances. The improvements are characterized relative to the achieved reduction in CPU time for a software application.

Findings

The improved enumerative procedure reduces the CPU time required to solve the selective maintenance problems by as much as 99 per cent. There is a corresponding increase in practical problem size of more than 200 per cent.

Practical implications

Almost all organizations use a variety of repairable systems to achieve their mission. Typically, these systems have to share the limited maintenance resources possessed by the organization. Therefore, an improved ability to solve selective maintenance problem is relevant to many industries.

Originality/value

The body of knowledge relative to selective maintenance continues to grow. However, this is the first study aimed at improving the capability of engineers to solve practically‐sized selective maintenance problems.

Citation

Rajagopalan, R. and Cassady, C.R. (2006), "An improved selective maintenance solution approach", Journal of Quality in Maintenance Engineering, Vol. 12 No. 2, pp. 172-185. https://doi.org/10.1108/13552510610667183