| Article ID: | iaor2000735 |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Volume: | 9 |
| Issue: | 4 |
| Start Page Number: | 393 |
| End Page Number: | 401 |
| Publication Date: | Oct 1998 |
| Journal: | IMA Journal of Mathematics Applied in Business and Industry |
| Authors: | Thomas L.C., Ansell J.I., Archibald T.W. |
| Keywords: | quality & reliability |
The high cost of maintenance encourages managers to ‘optimize’ their maintenance schemes. A facet of the ‘optimizing’ performance is being able to predict more precisely the time to failure of components and equipment. In many cases, failure results from degradation. Modelling the degradation process is likely to give rise to better prediction of failure times. There has been a variety of approaches to the modelling, and more recent authors have considered the issues of estimation. This paper reviews some of the models used, and the criteria for selecting models, and considers some of the practical issues. The maintenance context of the modelling is also considered.