Progressive maintenance policy for multiple repairable systems with imperfect maintenance
Journal of Quality in Maintenance Engineering
ISSN: 1355-2511
Article publication date: 26 July 2021
Issue publication date: 28 June 2022
Abstract
Purpose
Degradation of repairable components may not be similar after each maintenance activity; thus, the classic (traditional-time based) maintenance policies, which consider preventive maintenance (PM), age-based maintenance and overhauls to be done at fixed time interval, may fail to monitor the exact condition of the component. Thus, a progressive maintenance policy (PMP) may be more appropriate for the industries that deal with large, complex and critical repairable systems (RS) such as aerospace industries, nuclear power plants, etc.
Design/methodology/approach
A progressive maintenance policy is developed, in which hard life, PM scheduled time and overhaul period of the system are revised after each service activity by adjusting PM interval and mean residual life (MRL) such that the risk of failure is not increased.
Findings
A comparative study is then carried out between the classic PM policy and developed PMP, and the improvement in availability, mean time between failures and reduction in maintenance cost is registered.
Originality/value
The proposed PMP takes care of the equipment degradation more efficiently than any other existing maintenance policies and is also flexible in its application as the policy can be continuously amended as per the failure profile of the equipment. Similar maintenance policies assuming lifetime distributions are available in the literature, but to ascertain that the proposed PMP is more suitable and applicable to the industries, this paper uses Kijima-based imperfect maintenance models. The proposed PMP is demonstrated through a real-time data set example.
Keywords
Citation
Sharma, G. and Rai, R.N. (2022), "Progressive maintenance policy for multiple repairable systems with imperfect maintenance", Journal of Quality in Maintenance Engineering, Vol. 28 No. 3, pp. 668-685. https://doi.org/10.1108/JQME-08-2019-0075
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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