IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ejores/v321y2025i2p565-585.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Condition-based switching, loading, and age-based maintenance policies for standby systems

Author

Listed:
  • Zhao, Xian
  • Li, Rong
  • Han, He
  • Qiu, Qingan

Abstract

Standby techniques are widely incorporated in structural design to enhance the inherent reliability of systems. To further leverage the system performance during operation, decision-makers can adopt operational policies to manage system degradation. Specifically, at the system level, unit switching that dynamically determines the online unit contributes to avoiding unexpected shutdowns. At the unit level, adjusting load levels to manage the trade-off between condition degradation and revenue accumulation is crucial for maximizing profit. Additionally, adopting age-based maintenance as a tactical decision, which effectively facilitates the integration of maintenance resources, can be implemented to restore a degraded system. For instance, maintenance is typically scheduled at fixed moments for multi-generator power systems located in remote areas. In between maintenance moments, the proactive switching of generators can ensure uninterrupted output, and the adjustment of load levels for online generators helps to maximize output. Motivated by such engineering practices, this paper investigates condition-based switching, loading, and age-based maintenance policies for standby systems to maximize the expected profit rate in the long-run horizon. The problem is formulated as a Markov decision process. The structural properties of the control-limit switching and monotone loading policies are analyzed for easy policy implementation and efficient problem solutions. For comparative purposes, several heuristic policies are proposed and evaluated. Finally, numerical examples are presented to validate theoretical results and illustrate the superiority of the proposed risk control policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Zhao, Xian & Li, Rong & Han, He & Qiu, Qingan, 2025. "Condition-based switching, loading, and age-based maintenance policies for standby systems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 321(2), pages 565-585.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:321:y:2025:i:2:p:565-585
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2024.09.014
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221724007185
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ejor.2024.09.014?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:321:y:2025:i:2:p:565-585. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eor .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.