Multi-phase preventive maintenance strategy for leased equipment considering usage rate variation

• Equipment usage rate affects the failures of leased equipment. • A multi-phase preventive maintenance (PM) model with actual usage rate is proposed. • An optimal PM strategy with average usage rate is provided as a comparison. • Optimal PM times and PM degree are determined to minimize lease service cost. • The proposed model with actual usage rate can reduce lease service cost. Lessors are responsible for equipment maintenance during the lease period. The usage rate of these equipment affects their failures, reliability and decision-making on maintenance strategy. For some leased equipment, such as those producing seasonal products, the usage rate varies. However, conventional approaches usually set usage rate as a constant. Different from the existing literature, this work considers the variation of usage rate, and proposes a multi-phase preventive maintenance (PM) decision model to determine the PM times and degrees at different phases. The goal is to minimize lessors’ lease service cost by balancing corrective maintenance (CM) cost, PM cost and penalty cost during the lease period. In this model, an age correspondence framework is applied to characterize the variation of usage rate at different phases. An accelerated failure time model and an age reduction model are adopted to capture the effect of variable usage rate and imperfect PM on the equipment’s reliability. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed model, it is contrasted with a PM decision model with average usage rate. The impact of unit PM cost, CM cost, and penalty cost on maintenance strategy is discussed by numerical examples. Managerial insights for maintenance strategy are provided for lessors. The results indicate that the proposed approach considering varied usage rate can change the optimal PM times and degrees, and consequently lead to a lower lease service cost than conventional approaches using average usage rate; lessors need to enhance PM capability and reduce PM cost.