Opportunistic and delayed maintenance as strategies for sustainable maintenance practices

PurposeOpportunistic and delayed maintenances are increasingly becoming important strategies for sustainable maintenance practices since they increase the lifetime of complex systems like aircrafts and heavy equipment. The objective of the current study is to quantify the optimal time window for adopting these strategies.Design/methodology/approachThe current study considers the trade-offs between different costs involved in the opportunistic and delayed maintenances (of equipment) like the fixed cost of scheduled maintenances, the opportunistic rewards that may be earned and the cost of premature parts replacement. The probability of the opportunistic maintenance has been quantified under two different scenarios - Mission Reliability and Renewal Process. In the case of delayed maintenance, the cost of the delayed maintenance is also considered. The study uses optimization techniques to find the optimal maintenance time windows and also derive useful insights.FindingsApart from finding the optimal time window for the maintenance activities the study also shows that opportunistic maintenance is beneficial provided the opportunistic reward is significantly large; the cost of conducting scheduled maintenance in the pre-determined slot is significantly large. Similarly, the opportunistic maintenance may not be beneficial if the pre-mature equipment parts replacement cost is significantly high. The optimal opportunistic maintenance time is increasing function of Weibull failure rate parameter "beta" and decreasing function of Weibull failure rate parameter "theta." In the case of optimal delayed maintenance time, these relationships reverse.Originality/valueTo the best of our knowledge, very few studies exist that have used mission reliability to study opportunistic maintenance or considered the different cost trade-offs comprehensively.