Time-to-replace revision in a cost-based scheduling problem of preventive maintenance

Aim of this paper is to demonstrate the effectiveness of a reliability- A nd cost-based revision of maintenance tasks' time-to-replace values to reduce the cost of maintenance in a complex environment represented by a highly constrained scheduling problem. This study takes inspiration from a real application of the tasks/actions scheduling process on an automatic packaging machines that counts hundreds of components subject to failures and replacements. The introduction of a robust reliability analysis for time-tofailure prediction combined with a unit cost minimization model applied to the single component of the machine suggests which tasks have to be revised. This approach is applied to a case study and the obtained results are discussed.