Optimal Opportunistic Maintenance Strategy for a Serial System Considering Quality Characteristic and Maintenance Effect

ABSTRACT This paper presents a novel opportunistic maintenance (OM) strategy for a two‐component serial system. In contrast to the traditional models, the presented maintenance policy considers the negative maintenance effects on components and quality control. The hazard rate of components is modeled with a hybrid hazard rate, and the quality loss model is developed to describe the losses caused by unqualified products. Component states are jointly characterized by component reliability and quality loss. When a component deteriorates to a defined preventive maintenance (PM) threshold, it is restored by PM; meanwhile, the other component is opportunistically repaired when it reaches the set OM threshold. When the number of maintenance activities of a component reaches a certain threshold, the component is replaced by a new one. The optimal component reliability, quality loss threshold, and the maximal number of PM are derived by minimizing the hybrid performance indicator (HPI). Finally, the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed model are demonstrated by an illustrative case.