A maintenance float system with periodic overhauls

In this work, a maintenance float system is considered. Equipments in workstation are submitted to overhauls carried out at regular time intervals. A mathematical model has been constructed to find out the best combination of three parameters: the number of standby units, R, the number of maintenance crews in the maintenance centre, L and the time between overhauls, T. The strategy to construct the model involved: the development of differential equations in order to determine system state probabilities; the definition of an operating cycle; the calculation of the cycle duration and respective total maintenance system cost incurred; and the utilization of a search method to find out the combination of parameters that minimizes the total cost of a specific system.