A review of condition-based maintenance decision-making

Condition-based maintenance (CBM) has been a research topic since 1975. It has been introduced as an alternative approach to enhance the effectiveness of preventive maintenance strategy. Currently, CBM research is growing rapidly. Compared with the traditional time-based maintenance approach, CBM application is more beneficial and realistic. With CBM, better maintenance decisions can be made to avoid or minimise unnecessary maintenance costs. This paper attempts to explore how exactly CBM decision-making is conducted, with the methods of decision-making classified into current-condition-evaluation-based and future-condition-prediction-based. This paper systematically reviews the applications of these methods by focusing on the techniques used, as well as on case studies. It concludes with findings based on the academic and industrial perspectives. [Received 10 July 2010; Revised 9 November 2010; Accepted 24 February 2011]