Condition Based Maintenance for Two-Component Systems with Reliability and Cost Considerations

This paper studies a maintenance policy for a system composed of two components, which are subject to continuous deterioration and consequently stochastic failure. The failure of each component results in the failure of the system. The components are inspected periodically and their deterioration degrees are monitored. The components can be maintained using different maintenance actions (repair or replacement) with different costs. Using stochastic regenerative properties of the system, a stochastic model is developed in order to analyze the deterioration process and a novel approach is presented that simultaneously determines the time between two successive inspection periods and the appropriate maintenance action for each of the components based on the observed degrees of deterioration. This approach considers different criteria like reliability and long-run expected cost of the system. A numerical example is provided in order to illustrate the implementation of the proposed approach.