Optimal replacement and overhaul decisions with imperfect maintenance and warranty contracts

In this article, we develop a model to help a maintenance decision making situation of a given equipment. We propose a novel model to determine optimal life-cycle duration and intervals between overhauls by minimizing global maintenance costs. We consider a situation where the costumer, which owns the equipment, may negotiate a better warranty contract by offering an improved preventive maintenance program for the equipment. The equipment receives three kind of actions: repairs, overhauls, and replacement. An overhaul represents an imperfect maintenance action, that is, the failure rate is improved but not a point that the equipment is as good as new. Corrective maintenance actions are minimal, in the sense that the failure rate after each repair is the same as before the failure. The proposed strategy surpasses others seen in the literature since it considers at the same time the warranty negotiation situation and the optimal life-cycle duration under imperfect preventive actions. We also propose a simplified approach that facilitates the task of implementing the method in standard solvers. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.