Condition‐based maintenance policy for a multi‐component system considering stochastic dependence and quality loss

Abstract The reliability evaluation of multi‐component systems has attracted increasing concern in academic and industrial circles. However, the research maintenance optimization for multi‐component systems is still underexplored due to the curse of dimensionality. This paper makes a novel contribution to the existing literature by proposing a condition‐based maintenance (CBM) policy for multi‐component systems with joint consideration of stochastic dependence and quality loss. The system is composed of critical and auxiliary components. The deterioration process of the critical component can be accelerated when the auxiliary one degrades to a certain state. Based on the states of the components, the operation cost of the system owing to quality loss is analyzed, and the operation cost is used as the threshold for the preventive maintenance (PM) decision. Semi‐regenerative technology is used to model the evolution process of the system, and the long‐run average cost is calculated. The optimal inspection period and PM threshold are derived by minimizing the long‐run average cost, and the stationary distribution of the system state under the optimal long‐run average cost is derived with a proposed algorithm. Sensitivity analysis is conducted to reveal the most sensitive parameter. Finally, an illustrative example is presented, and a comparison experiment with other maintenance policies is conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed policy.