Analysis of periodic preventive maintenance with general system failure distribution

Preventive maintenance is applied to improve system availability or decrease operational cost. Preventive maintenance with generally distributed parameters is discussed, and a steady-state solution is obtained by solving the underlying semi-Markov process (SMP). Specifically, periodic preventive maintenance with deterministically distributed repair time and maintenance time is discussed in detail, and closed-form results are presented. The behavior of the preventive maintenance mechanism is evaluated by numerical examples. Using our results, system operational cost can be reduced by the proper choice of optimal maintenance intervals.