Preventive maintenance policy with effect dependent cost

This paper considers a preventive maintenance policy, under which the repairable system undergoes preventive maintenance (PM) periodically and is minimally repaired at each failure. Most preventive maintenance models assume that each PM costs a fixed predetermined amount regardless of the effectiveness of each PM. However, it seems more reasonable to assume that the PM cost depends on the degree of effectiveness of the PM activity. In this paper, we consider a periodic preventive maintenance policy when the PM cost is an increasing function of the PM effect. The optimal number and period for the periodic PM policy with effect dependent cost that minimize the expected cost rate per unit time over an infinite time span are obtained. Explicit solutions to determine the optimal periodic PM are exemplified for the Weibull distribution case.