Selecting the optimum inspection method for preventive maintenance

With technological advances, our lives have become increasingly dependent on various facilities. It is important to detect deterioration or failure symptoms using inspection or monitoring devices for enabling preventive maintenance to keep them working. For this purpose, it is necessary to select the proper inspection method to detect deterioration and failure symptoms of each equipment item. In this paper, we propose a systematic method to determine the optimum combination of inspection methods to minimize the sum of inspection costs and the losses due to equipment failure considering the detection capability of both humans and inspection or monitoring devices. The proposed method was applied to the equipment in a distribution center to demonstrate its effectiveness.