Availability optimization of multicomponent products with economic dependence under two-dimensional warranty (Q2059259)

Summary: For multicomponent products, the maintenance of every component separately will increase the downtime and reduce the availability of products during the warranty period. To solve this problem, the economic dependence between the components is considered in this paper. Firstly, a single-component two-dimensional (2D) preventive maintenance (PM) availability model is established, and the simulated annealing algorithm is adopted to calculate the optimal 2D PM interval to achieve the maximal availability of any single component. Then, to ensure that the warranty cost of each component does not exceed the budget, the PM benchmark interval is introduced, and the PM work is optimized following the method of grouping maintenance. Based on this, the 2D preventive grouping maintenance availability model of multicomponent products is established. Finally, an example is given to verify the proposed method, and the results indicate that the proposed method increases the availability of multicomponent products during the 2D warranty period.