Sponsor:

Air Force Research Laboratory

Research Team:

C. Richard Cassady, Mauricio Carrasco , Alejandro Mendoza, Kellie Schneider , Heather L. Nachtmann, Chase E. Rainwater

Universities Involved:

University of Arkansas

Start Date:

07/01/03

End Date:

06/30/04

Summary:

The objective of this project is to develop a modeling-based methodology for the Air Force Research Laboratory for managing selective maintenance decisions when the planning horizon is more than one future mission
All military organizations depend on the reliable performance of repairable systems for the successful completion of missions. The use of mathematical modeling for the purpose of modeling repairable systems and designing optimal maintenance policies for these systems has received an extensive amount of attention in the literature. Unfortunately, the vast majority of this work ignores potential limitations on the resources required to perform maintenance actions. This shortcoming has motivated the development of models for selective maintenance, the process of identifying the subset of actions to perform from a set of desirable maintenance actions. Previously, we have developed a class of mathematical models that can be used to identify selective maintenance decisions for the following scenario – A system has just completed a mission and will begin its next mission soon. Maintenance cannot be performed during missions; therefore the decision-maker must decide which components to maintain prior to the next mission. The selective maintenance models considered to date treat decision-making relative to a single, future mission. If a system is required to perform a sequence of missions, then the selective maintenance decisions directly affect system reliability for the next mission and indirectly affect the system reliability for later missions. The primary objective of this project is to develop a modeling-based methodology for managing selective maintenance decisions when the planning horizon is more than one future mission.