Level of Repair Analysis Including Failure Analysis and Optimal Location of Maintenance Facilities and Resources

Abstract

Level of repair analysis (LORA) aims to determine the optimal repair policy for complex systems' components. A repair policy is an a priori decision about which faulty components to discard or repair, and where these actions should take place. Traditionally, LORA models have assumed the maintenance network as pre-defined and identified the resources required to perform the maintenance at each facility as an output. In this paper, the maintenance network itself is an output rather than an input. Other advantages are the ability to deploy different types of resources at the operational level and to allow precise identification of the faulty component. We propose a mixed integer programming (MIP) formulation for the optimization problem, associated with a flow model. Experiments using a set of hypotheticals, but adequate for the purposes of the study, instances provide strong evidence that the formulation's capabilities can lead to significant cost savings.