Performance comparisons for maintained items

Most maintenance studies deal with the problem of maintenance-costs optimization, given the cost of the available maintenance actions and a cost objective function. The focus in this paper is on yet another relevant aspect, namely the improvement in performance that results from a maintenance action in terms of performance criteria of interest. The evaluation of performance improvement requires comparisons of random quantities which is done by means of suitable probabilistic ordering notions. Different modelling situations are considered, and for each of them conditions are obtained on the life distributions of the present item, and the new one if of different type, that ensure performance improvement. Apart from providing a decision tool for maintenance application, the paper also contributes to clarifying relationships between (probabilistic) ordering notions and aging properties within the maintenance context.