A Markov-based Optimal Maintenance Policy for Production Process

This article considers a machine maintenance problem. When the machine fails after a stochastic period, reducing its capacity to a proportion of the nominal level. In this degraded capacity state, three maintenance and repair policy include, continue at 50% capacity, imperfect maintenance and increase the capacity of the machine to 80% or perfect replacement and increase the capacity of the machine to the initial stateare available for evaluation. By modeling the system as a discrete-time Markov chain and analyzing the probability transition matrix between the system states, the costs associated in each state can be evaluated. The objective function representing the average cost per unit time of production is calculated to determine the optimal maintenance policy.