In this paper, we develop a preventive maintenance (PM) strategy for a solar photovoltaic system composed of solar panels functioning as a series system. The photovoltaic system is considered in a failed state whenever its efficiency drops below a predefined threshold or any electrical wiring element is damaged. In such a situation of failure, a minimal repair is performed. The proposed PM strategy suggests systematically replacing n panels with their respective wiring system every time units T over a finite operating time span H. The panels to be preventively replaced are selected by the maintenance agent after an on-site overall assessment of all panels, making sure every time not to replace panels previously replaced during a given replacement cycle of all panels of the system. An analytical model is proposed in order to simultaneously determine the optimal PM period, T, and the optimal number of solar panels, n, to be replaced at each PM. This is done by modeling and minimizing the expected total maintenance cost over the finite operating time horizon H. A numerical example is presented to illustrate the use of the proposed modelling approach and to discuss the obtained results. The latter provide the optimal solutions (T*, n*) for different combinations of input parameters. They also show the economic relevance of the proposed PM strategy through estimation of the economic gain when comparing the situations with and without preventive maintenance.
This paper deals with the problem of maintenance and production planning for randomly failing multiple-product manufacturing system. The latter consists of one machine which produces several types of products in order to satisfy random demands corresponding to every type of product. At any given time, the machine can only produce one type of product and then switches to another one. The purpose of this study is to establish sequentially an economical production plan and an optimal maintenance strategy, taking into account the influence of the production rate on the system’s degradation. Analytical models are developed in order to find the production plan and the preventive maintenance strategy which minimizes sequentially the total production/inventory cost and then the total maintenance cost. Finally, a numerical example is presented to illustrate the usefulness of the proposed approach.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.