Selection of an Optimal Equipment Maintenance Strategy Using an Inspection Maintenance Model

Reliability centered maintenance is a tool for managing the maintenance of deteriorating assets. The basis of this method is the identification of failure mode of equipment, deterioration process, and maintenance scheduling to reduce the risk of failure and maintenance costs. One of the maintenance methods used in reliability-based maintenance is inspection-based maintenance. In inspection-based maintenance, a decision about the type of maintenance is made after an inspection and determination of the deterioration status of equipment. In this paper, a model for annual maintenance scheduling of network equipment is provided. The scheduling problem is formulated as a probabilistic model with binary variables as inspection times and the optimal maintenance strategy is determined. This model is implemented on a transformer and sensitivity analysis is performed to analyze the effect of inspection and outage cost.