Maintenance decision support: a simulation approach

In today’s industries, the need for optimizing maintenance decisions has gained prominence, more so, with respect to formulating maintenance strategies best suited for the organization. Often, such strategies mitigate the impact of unnecessary downtimes attributed to equipment failure. However, formulating such strategies is not straightforward owing to several challenges. Firstly, optimal spare parts provisioning performs a critical role towards sustaining the equipment’s operational capabilities, owing to the fact that, the spare part demand is usually initiated by equipment failure. Here, sub-optimal replenishment lead times often imply unnecessary production losses. Moreover, the provisioning strategy is dependent on the reparability of the component where, component reconditioning is feasible depending on the degradation level at the time of repair. Invariably, this influences the stocking policy and by extension, the provisioning strategy adopted by the organization. To realistically model complexities associated with, on the one hand, the equipment maintenance strategy, and on the other hand, the spare parts provisioning strategy, simulation approaches are often explored, thus the subject of this study. The simulation approach evaluates the impact of alternative spare part provisioning strategies on repairable systems, and here, a multi-echelon provisioning system is mimicked. The approach further mimics’ alternative maintenance policies, for instance, reactive maintenance, and condition based maintenance, where, depending on the type of policy adopted, varying equipment deterioration is influenced. The approach is implemented in the empirical case of thermal power plant engine failures and the results underscore the importance of component reconditioning on spare part provisioning for repairable systems, and moreover, in instances where both the reactive and condition based maintenance approach are implemented.status: publishe