Economic analysis of maintenance policies for a system

Maintenance is an inevitable reality in industry. Maintenance of a system usually involves maintenance of multiple components with multiple failure modes, each of which may require different maintenance policy (i.e., corrective (CM), preventive (PM), or condition based maintenance (CBM)). A maintenance policy may be best for one component and the worst for the other (CM may be best for a very cheap and non-critical component and the worst for a critical one). This paper presents an economical analysis method that identifies the best maintenance policy for a failure mode and/or component of a system.