An integrated maintenance-upgrade policy for stochastically degrading products

Min Zhou, Xiujie Zhao, Zhen He and Kwang-Jae Kim

Reliability Engineering and System Safety, 2025, vol. 261, issue C

Abstract: Providing appropriate maintenance policies for degrading products can help sustain good performance within the specified operating time without incurring overwhelming cost burdens. In practice, many manufacturers perceive upgrade as a strategic alternative to enhance product reliability and minimize maintenance costs. In this paper, we propose a maintenance strategy framework that integrates upgrade for stochastically degrading products. We consider two different scenarios that adapt to various manufacturer’s decision-making preferences. In the first scenario, the preventive maintenance (PM) target is fixed as a constant. In the second, the PM target is variable, which allows manufacturer to find the optimal policy via more flexible repair operations. In both scenarios, we establish maintenance models under a finite time horizon using a Markov decision process and study the structural properties of the optimal policy. We conclude that the optimal decision lies in employing a control limit policy among upgrade, PM and doing nothing. Numerical examples are then provided to illustrate the proposed methods. We find that with a variable PM target, the manufacturer is afforded greater flexibility, significantly reducing the expected cost. Additionally, when the target shifts from constant to variable, the trade-off among the three decisions of upgrade, PM, and doing nothing changes considerably.

Keywords: Maintenance policy optimization; Control limit; Preventive maintenance; Upgrade; Markov decision process (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:reensy:v:261:y:2025:i:c:s0951832025002558

DOI: 10.1016/j.ress.2025.111054

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