Optimal preventive-maintenance warranty policy for repairable products

This paper investigates preventive-maintenance warranty (PMW) policies for repairable products. When the length of a warranty period is pre-specified, the optimal number of preventive maintenance actions, corresponding maintenance degrees, and the maintenance schedule are jointly determined. We show...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEuropean journal of operational research Vol. 134; no. 1; pp. 59 - 69
Main Authors Yeh, Ruey Huei, Lo, Hui-Chiung
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01.10.2001
Elsevier
Elsevier Sequoia S.A
SeriesEuropean Journal of Operational Research
Subjects
Algorithms
Maintenance
Minimal repair
Optimization
Preventive maintenance
Studies
Warranties
Warranty
Warranty
Minimal repair
Maintenance
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Summary:This paper investigates preventive-maintenance warranty (PMW) policies for repairable products. When the length of a warranty period is pre-specified, the optimal number of preventive maintenance actions, corresponding maintenance degrees, and the maintenance schedule are jointly determined. We show that there exists a unique optimal policy such that the expected total warranty cost is minimized. Under some reasonable conditions, structural properties of the optimal policy are obtained. Using these properties, an algorithm is provided to efficiently search for the optimal policy. In the case where the failure density is Weibull, a closed form expression of the optimal policy is derived. Finally, the impact of providing preventive maintenance within a warranty period is illustrated through a numerical example.
ISSN:0377-2217
1872-6860
DOI:10.1016/S0377-2217(00)00238-1