Opportunistic maintenance models: Review and discussion with a special focus on the treatment of uncertainty

Abstract

In this thesis, we review and discuss the area of opportunistic maintenance models. We want to examine if the existing models can be useful as decision-support to maintenance management, and focus especially on the treatment of uncertainty in the models. A short introduction to opportunistic maintenance models has been given, and we have reviewed the treatment of uncertainty in existing models. Based on this review we have concluded that many assumptions and simplifications are taken in these models. Hence, they are not directly useful as decision-support without further assessment of the uncertainty related to these assumptions and simplifications. We present a method for assessing the uncertainty factors and rank their importance. With the information given by this assessment, we believe that the maintenance management has a better premise to use these models as decision-support.