Maintenance Optimization of Multi–State Systems with Single Maintenance Capacity and Arbitrarily Distributed Maintenance Time

In engineering practices, a system can continuously operate while some components are being repaired. On the other hand, due to limited maintenance capacity, such as manpower and/or repair facility, maintenance actions can only be executed in serial fashion rather than in parallel. In this study, a new maintenance optimization problem for multi-state systems with single maintenance capacity is studied. In contrast to the exponential assumption for the distribution of maintenance time in most reported works, the time for each maintenance task can be arbitrarily distributed in our study. An optimization problem is formulated by treating the expected performance capacity of a system as an objective function. An illustrative example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.