Expected life cycle cost for systems with repairable components

Abstract

Life Cycle Cost (LCC) typically is specified as the total cost that arises during the mission life of a product. Life cycle cost analysis has been used as a strong tool to estimate the cost of various product life cycle stages and to provide cost trade of between these stages. This thesis intends to develop a generic mathematical model to estimate the life cycle cost of systems with repairable components. In addition the proposed model has the capability of providing cost trade-off between product validation and corrective maintenance by selecting the best target reliability level and confidence level and between preventive maintenance and corrective maintenance cost through finding the suitable preventive maintenance interval and improvement factor, the most advantage of preparing cost trade-off is reducing the total cost during mission life. Two sets of data were employed in order to evaluate the proposed model by using MathWork Matlab 2012. The first is the extension of a previous case study in the field of cost optimization and the other is data collected from a case study performed in an automotive industry company. Final results illustrate the capability of the proposed model to cost estimation and cost management.