the first motive for the determination and evaluation of an energy productionsystem is the need to change. such system is dynamic in nature and is influenced bymany factors such as age and physiological status of individual sheep or goat, quantityand quality of available feed and environment including the management systems.traditional pastoral resource assessments do not always account for the...

This paper presents an effective way of modeling complex systems through identified functioning modes. In the proposed approach, the integration of monitoring in the manufacturing system is facilitated by the development of a generic model. The aim is to propose a monitoring system able of absorbing internal degradation of any variables and ensuring the continuity of the service. The outline of...

Uncertainties in the decision making of reliability centered maintenance (RCM) are discussed. These uncertainties might be unacceptable in many practical applications, leading to non-optimum maintenance strategies. An alternative approach, opening for speci®ed uncertainties is shown to correct this defect. Exemplifying the approach, a simple ®re detection system is discussed. q 2001 Elsevier Sc...

Software systems experience gradual performance degradation despite of which they are required to perform service, though at a degraded level. Different preventive and corrective techniques (restart, rejuvenation etc.) have been applied to restore efficient service of the system. In this paper, we model the process of degradation together with the corrective actions of minimal repair, major rep...

Wiener process with a linear drift has been extensively studied in degradation modeling, mainly due to the existence of an analytical expression of the first hitting time distribution which permits feasible mathematical developments. However, a fundamental problem related to the stationary Wiener process is that it can only describe linearly drifted diffusion processes. This article is devoted ...

Scientific maintenance methodologies are specially needed to enhance system reliability and safety, reduce maintenance manpower, spares, and repair costs, eliminate scheduled inspections, and maximize lead time for maintenance and parts procurement. This paper systematically presents a comprehensive methodology and framework for aggressive inspection and condition based predictive maintenance o...

OBJECTIVE Little is known about the processes and factors that account for maintenance, with several theories existing that have not been subject to many empirical tests. The aim of this study was to test how well theoretical constructs derived from the Health Action Process Approach, Rothman's theory of maintenance, and Verplanken's approach to habitual behavior predicted maintenance of attend...

We present a generic mathematical modeling approach for solving rolling stock scheduling problems. Our approach is based on a time-space network and a multi-commodity flow model; in order to deal with the various types of rolling stock scheduling problems faced by SNCF planners, it integrates numerous modeling settings and features including maintenance routing requirements which are treated by...

Model transformations aim to process one (or more) source model in order to derive one (or more) target model, thus acting in the role of compilers in a model driven engineering context. In actual application scenarios, model transformations play a key role in (1) providing systematic bridges between various domain-specific modeling languages (2) driving the automated derivation of the design a...

In usual software engineering approaches, object oriented modeling with the UML is meanwhile state of the art. In this area, object orientation has been extremely beneficial: object oriented modeling allows to structure the application data in a way that eases maintenance and that allows to distribute the responsibility for certain functionality among the participating objects or components. Fi...