A condition-based order-replacement policy for a single-unit system

This paper presents a condition-based order-replacement policy for a single-unit system, aiming to optimize the condition-based maintenance and the spare order management jointly. The concerned system deteriorates stochastically and gradually, and is inspected periodically. Under the proposed policy, both the preventive replacement and the spare order are decided based on the observed deterioration level of the system. Therefore, the decision variables for this order-replacement problem include the inspection interval, the ordering threshold, and the preventive replacement threshold. The analytical modeling of the condition-based order-replacement policy is presented in detail in this paper. The policy performance is evaluated in terms of the long-run average cost per unit time, the mean availability, and the rate of preventive replacement, for which the mathematical models are also derived. Numerical examples illustrate the performance of the condition-based order-replacement policy, especially the influences of the lead time of the spare order over the different performance criteria.