Comparison of Group and Opportunistic Maintenance/Replacement Policies for Heterogenous Multi-Component Systems

Mostafavivala, Fatemeh; Rasay, Hasan; Najafi Ghobadi, Somayeh

doi:10.22059/ijms.2026.414511.678577

Comparison of Group and Opportunistic Maintenance/Replacement Policies for Heterogenous Multi-Component Systems

Articles in Press

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Fatemeh Mostafavivala ¹

Hasan Rasay ²

Somayeh Najafi Ghobadi ¹

¹ Kermanshah University of Technology

² Associate Professor Of Industrial Engineering; Kermanshah University of Technology

10.22059/ijms.2026.414511.678577

Abstract

In maintenance/replacement planning for multi-component systems, to take advantage of economies of scale and consequently decreasing the maintenance costs, three policies are commonly employed including opportunistic policy, group policy and combination of the two. In this study, a unified analytical framework based on the renewal theory is proposed to model and compare different maintenance policies for multi-component systems with heterogeneous units. Closed-form equations to optimize the expected costs of the system per time unit are derived under each policy, while the renewal function is numerically evaluated using a recursive equation. It is discussed how some policies reduce to others given a specific condition. Numerical examples, sensitivity analyses, a real case study and a Monte Carlo simulation to validate the results are provided. The results indicate that combining opportunistic and group replacement policies can be an effective approach to control and reduce the operational/ maintenance costs of multi-unit systems. Also, combining these two policies provides more robust solutions so that the expected costs being less sensitive to change in the system parameters.

Keywords

Maintenance

Renewal theory

Replacement

Group Replacement Policy

Opportunist Replacement Policy

Subjects