Cost‐optimized maintenance of the elevator – single unit case

Elevator manufacturers are responsible for securing the safety and maintaining the performance, cleanliness and cosmetic appearance of the elevators which they sell.The purpose of this paper is to develop a cost‐optimized after‐sales strategy for the maintenance of an elevator part. First, in order to find an optimum maintenance method, the replacement probability and the inspection probability of the part are theoretically derived using each of the three maintenance methods: Time Based Maintenance (TBM), Condition Based Maintenance (CBM), and Breakdown Maintenance (BM). Then, the approach to plan a cost‐optimized maintenance method is presented and the relationship between the failure characteristics of the part and the cost‐optimized maintenance method is discussed.The results of using the proposed approach are compared with those obtained by Online Quality Engineering (Taguchi methods). Finally, from numerical experiments, it is shown that this approach can provide a more cost‐effective and better maintenance method than the method provided by Online Quality Engineering.