PREDICTIVE MAINTENANCE - THE ONE-UNIT REPLACEMENT MODEL

Predictive maintenance consists in deciding whether or not to maintain a system according to its state. In this paper, we address the case o f one-unit systems, i.e. systems whose state is given by the value tak en by one variable. The system is replaced in the case of breakdowns, but also when a maintenance is decided, at a lowest cost than in the b reakdowns case. We first propose a global approach to the problem and provide a characterisation of the optimal maintenance, We then focus o n the case when the state transition between two successive periods fo llows a negative exponential distribution. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B .V. All rights reserved.