Title: Optimal preventive maintenance warranty policy for repairable products with periodically increasing failure rate

Authors: Syed N. Mujahid, M. Abdur Rahim

Addresses: Department of Systems Engineering, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. ' Faculty of Business Administration, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton NB E3B 5A3, Canada

Abstract: In this paper, a preventive maintenance warranty (PMW) policy for repairable products is investigated. The objective is to determine the optimal number of preventive maintenance (PM) actions, the degree of maintenance and the length of each PM interval; while minimising the total expected warranty cost. The failure rate of repairable products is assumed to be periodically increasing over time. A unique relationship between successive PM intervals is determined. For a special case of failure rate and minimal repair cost, a relationship among the PM intervals is derived. A unique property is inferred from this special case, which relates the maximum failure level in the adjoining PM intervals. The derived relations are illustrated by a numerical example. Yeh and Lo presented a mathematical model for the optimal determination of a PMW policy under similar periodic failure rates. The present study is an extension of their work and shows that unequal PM intervals provide an economic benefit.

Keywords: periodically increasing failure rate; preventive maintenance; warranty; repairable products; unequal intervals.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOR.2010.035046

International Journal of Operational Research, 2010 Vol.9 No.2, pp.227 - 240

Published online: 01 Sep 2010 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article