A complex multi-state system with vacations in the repair

Abstract

A complex multi-state system subject to wear failure and given preventive maintenance is considered. Various internal levels of degradation are assumed. The repair facility is composed of a repairperson, who may take one or more vacations during the period considered. A policy is established for the repairperson’s vacation time. Two types of task may be performed by the repairperson: corrective repair and preventive maintenance. All embedded times in the system are phase type distributed. The transient and stationary distributions are determined and several reliability measures are developed in a matrix-algorithmic form. Costs and rewards are included in the model. The results are implemented computationally with Matlab. A numerical example shows that the distribution of vacation time can be optimised according to the net reward established.