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On the Coordinated Random Group Replacement Policy in Multivariate Repairable Systems

Department of Mathematics, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington 99164
Department of Management Science and Information Systems, Smeal College of Business Administration, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802
lih{at}math.wsu.edu
shx{at}psu.edu

We study a system with multiple components and preventive maintenance. At predetermined times, some of the components are replaced with new ones. We permit the set of components that are chosen for replacement to be random and study the effect of dependency in this selection. For example, we show that it is often better to have simultaneous replacements of components, rather than replacing each component independently of the others. We also show that preventive maintenance only makes sense for components whose lifetimes are new-better-than-used (NBU).

Subject classifications: reliability; maintenance and repair; replacement and renewal; probability; distribution comparisons; stochastic model applications.
History: Received October 2001; revision received April 2002; accepted May 2003.