2. Basic Selective Maintenance Model

In many industrial and military scenarios, a repairable system comprising a number of components is required to execute a sequence of missions, and the system can be repaired during breaks between two adjacent missions. Owing to limited maintenance resources (e.g., budget, time, and manpower), performing all desirable maintenance actions for all aged or failed components during the break can be costly. Using a selective maintenance strategy, a subset of feasible maintenance actions can be identified for a repairable system to improve the probability of the system successfully completing the next mission. This section introduced a basic mathematical model of selective maintenance. The system and components were assumed to be binary-state. During each break, multiple optional maintenance actions, from minimal corrective repairs to perfect preventive replacements, can be selected for each component. To maximize the probability of the repaired system successfully completing a future mission under the constraints of maintenance time and/or budget, three basic selective maintenance models were formulated. An illustrative example was provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of selective maintenance models.