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Index policies for the maintenance of a collection of machines by a set of repairmen

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Phil Ansell

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Abstract

A collection of M machines which deteriorate under usage is maintained by a set of R repairmen who may have other tasks to perform. Maintenance interventions will improve a machine's condition and may preempt costly breakdowns. The problem of scheduling such interventions to minimise the total expected discounted cost incurred in operating the machines over an infinite horizon is formulated as a Markov Decision Process which has the form of a restless bandit problem. We outline an approach to the development of maintenance policies based on simple machine indices in the form of a fair charge for a maintenance intervention in the machine's current state. Closed form indices are derived for two particular models. Numerical investigations demonstrate the strong performance of the derived index heuristics. © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Glazebrook KD, Mitchell HM, Ansell PS

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: European Journal of Operational Research

Year: 2005

Volume: 165

Issue: 1

Pages: 267-284

Print publication date: 16/08/2005

ISSN (print): 0377-2217

ISSN (electronic): 1872-6860

Publisher: Elsevier

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2004.01.036

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2004.01.036

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