Optimal periodic maintenance strategy under an intermittently used environment

In this paper, the optimal periodic replacement-like strategy with minimal repairs is considered under an intermittently used environment. Suppose tha t transactions or jobs with exponential service times arrive at a system ac cording to a homogeneous Poisson process and the system is alternatively in either a busy or an idle period subject to demand for use. We derive appro ximately the optimal preventive maintenance schedule which minimizes the re levant expected cost criterion for the system which behaves intermittently on an M/M/1 queueing process, and compare it with the usual maintenance sch edule for the continuously used system.