Component Repairs: When To Perform And What To Do?
Diederik Lugtigheid, University of Toronto
Dragan Banjevic, University of Toronto
Andrew K. S. Jardine, University of Toronto
Keywords: repairable system, virtual age, component repairs, intensity model, proportional hazard model, proportional intensity
model.
SUMMARY & CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, a new indicator is proposed, that reflects the form the goals of the process itself. These output variables can
state of a major component in function of the ages of the be minimum costs or downtime and/or maximum availability
(groups of) parts of which it consists. The contribution of the or reliability, among others.
ages of the parts to the state of the component is defined by
their weights. The indicator can be interpreted as the virtual
age of the component, and can therefore be used to define age-
reduction factors of different types of repair in a virtual age or
age-reduction process. The state indicator is used as the time
scale in a proportional intensity model. In this way, the joint
impact of different repair strategies and covariates on the
component failure intensity can be evaluated. This relationship Uncontrolled Operating Environment
is then used to address the question of which parts to replace
whenever a component comes in for repair and when to set the
preventive repair interval, in order to minimize the expected
costs per unit time until the next repair. An example is given.
1. INTRODUCTION
In capital-intensive industries, maintenance costs form a
big part of the total operating & production costs. According
to Campbell (1995), maintenance costs as a percentage of total
value-added costs can be as high as 20-50% for mining, 15-
25% for primary metal and 3-15% for processing and
manufacturing industries. From these figures, one would
expect that critical efforts be directed towards the optimization
of major component performance, as they account for a
considerable part of these costs. However, in practice this is
rarely the case.
In contrast to most minor components and parts, major
components are repaired and not replaced upon failure and/or
at preventive/predictive intervals. Therefore, the optimization
of component repair/replacement strategies is more complex
in this case. Moreover, it does not only involve deciding when
to replace, but also when to repair, which in itself creates
another issue to be addressed, that is, to what extent to repair
the component. The latter question is what makes the
optimization of major components complex, as there are many
different ways to carry out a repair.
The component repair problem can be seen as an input-
output process, where decisions can be made regarding the
repair process itself that affect the posterior performance of
the component, as shown in Figure 1.
In this figure, the Key Process Output Variables (KPOV)
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represent the response of the component repair and operating
process, and they are those measures that reflect the
successfulness of the process, and whose desired benchmarks
(Decisions)
Repair Interval?
What parts to replace?
Costs
Controlled
When to replace comp.? System
Remaining Useful Life
Repair &
Operating
Downtime
(Goals)
Health Information Availability
Process
Reliability
State of System
Y = f(X)
Key Process
Input Variables
Key Process
Output Variables
Figure 1 The Component Repair Process
The input to the process is represented by the Key Process
Input Variables (KPIV), and they can be classified into two
groups: controlled and uncontrolled KPIV. Uncontrolled
KPIV influence the output of the process, yet cant be
controlled. KPIV can be health information such as metal
particles in the lubricating oil or vibration measurements,
operating environment and the state of the system
(component), among others. The controlled KPIV are the only
means by which the process can be steered by the user or
controller. In the case of non-repairable components, this is a
replacement strategy only (preventive or predictive), yet in the
case of a repairable component, these are the repair interval or
strategy, the repair itself (to what extent to repair the
component) and the replacement interval or strategy (when to
replace the component rather than to repair it).
The key for optimizing the component repair and
operating process is to quantify the relationship between KPIV
and KPOV. This relationship then will translate the goals or
benchmarks of the KPOV into decisions regarding the
controlled KPIV.
There have been several attempts to quantify this
relationship in the reliability literature. The majority of them
use an intensity process (t ) of the counting process of
component failures N (t ) , defined as follows
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 (t ) = lim Pr(at least one failure in [t , t + ) | H ) /
0 t
(1)
= lim Pr( N (t + ) N (t ) = 1 | H ) /
0 t
where N (t ) represents the amount of component failures up
to, but not including t . H t represents the entire history up to
time t that incorporates all available information, such as
repair and maintenance actions the component has undergone
so far, health information, etc. Informally speaking, (t ) can
be interpreted as the hazard function of the current local
history starting at the last component repair, given the entire
history of the component (the information on all prior repairs
and health information) up to t .
Intensity models for non-repairable components that
account for uncontrolled KPIV are frequently encountered in
the reliability literature. A common method is the Proportional
Hazards Model (PHM) (Cox, 1972a). According to a recent
review of case studies by the authors, the PHM has been
applied successfully in many different industrial settings. See
for example Vlok et al (2002).
The Proportional Intensity Model (PIM) (Cox, 1972b), is
more suitable for modeling repairable components and
includes the PHM as a special case. The PIM allows for the
incorporation of concomitant information into the intensity
process as does the PHM, but does not necessarily assume that
all component repairs bring the component back to its new or
original condition.
Even though many papers use minimal or perfect repairs,
the majority of component repairs is neither perfect nor
minimal, but brings the component back to a state somewhere
in between (imperfect repair). This can also be accounted for
by the PIM, by using a virtual age or age-reduction process,
and letting the time scale in the baseline intensity be the
virtual age of the component. The virtual age or age-reduction
process (Malik, 1979 and Kijima, 1989), assumes that besides
the real age of the component, the component has a virtual age
that takes into account the effect of repair and maintenance
actions on the component. Every repair reduces the component
age by a certain age-reduction factor, where this factor is 0 or
1 in case of minimal and perfect repair, and between 0 and 1
in case of imperfect repair.
Although the PIM in combination with a virtual age
process seems an appealing method to describe the impact of
repair activities and covariates on the component, the meaning
of the age-reduction factor and how it can be related to
component repairs in a more direct form has not been
addressed so far. At the same time, the majority of the papers
that use this method assume only up to four possible repair
activities, but in reality this number can be much bigger. Also,
the connection to what effectively happens during a repair has
not been considered, i.e. a black box approach is typically
used.
In this paper some of these issues will be discussed, and
argued how they can be combined into a more flexible
intensity model, and how this model could be useful for
making optimal repair decisions. In section 2 repair and
maintenance actions will be discussed, and how these actions
can be translated into a component-state indicator, and
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consequently in an age-reduction factor. In section 3 it will be
discussed how this indicator can be incorporated into the
intensity function and how to estimate its parameters. Then, in
section 4, the decision process will be discussed, followed by
an example in section 5. Conclusions will be addressed in
section 6.
2. DEFINTION OF THE COMPONENT STATE
For major repairable components, a repair will be carried
out when the component fails, or before failure, according to a
preventive or predictive strategy. In both cases, the component
may be repaired on-site or off-site. On-site repairs usually are
minor corrections. When the component failure is more
severe, it must be taken out of operation (uninstalled) and
taken to the repair shop. In both cases, however, the steps to
undertake are the same: the component is disassembled,
evaluated and finally the repair is carried out. In the evaluation
process, it is determined which parts of the component have
failed and must be replaced (assuming no redundancy), and
which non-failed parts will be replaced as well. The more
parts of the component are replaced, the closer the component
gets to its new state (good-as-new), and when only few parts
are replaced, the state of the component will likely be close to
its state just before the repair (bad-as-old). The state of the
component, therefore, reflects how good (new) or bad (old)
the component really is.
Besides the amount of replaced parts, their ages
(accumulated operating hours) should also affect the
components state. That is, replacing a part with relatively few
accumulated operating hours will have less impact on the
components state than replacing the same part with more
accumulated operating hours. In other words, the state of the
component should be sensitive both to the amount of replaced
parts as to their respective accumulated operating hours.
Also, components usually do not consist of identical parts.
Therefore, some parts might be more important in terms of
their contribution to the components state than others, and
therefore should have a higher weight within the
component. These weights can also be interpreted as the
fraction of the components workload absorbed by each part.
Some parts will absorb more of this workload and therefore
have a higher weight than others. Also, the weights may
represent the contribution of the parts to the overall intensity
of failure of the component.
Taking the above mentioned desired properties of the
component state into consideration, a state indicator (here
called repair and maintenance indicator, or RMI) for a
component consisting of k parts, can be defined as,
k
RMI (t ) = j s j (t ) , (2)
j =1
where i is the weight of part j, and s j (t ) is the accumulated
operating time of part j currently in operation at moment t.
This indicator is monotone, increasing, and makes jumps at all
times when component repairs are carried out. These jumps
are downward, in case parts are replaced by newer ones, or
may be upward, in case some parts are replaced by older
ones, although downward jumps will be more common in
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practice. The downward jumps will be greater when parts with
higher weights and/or more accumulated operating hours are
replaced. If RMI (t + ) is the value of this indicator at time t
just after repair at t , and RMI (t ) is the value just before t (in
case a repair takes place at t), the state-reduction of the repair
can be expressed as one minus their ratio, and can be
interpreted as an age-reduction factor in a Kijima type II
virtual age process (Kijima, 1989). The reduction factor
defined here not necessarily remains constant, even though the
same parts are being replaced. This is because the factor
depends not only on the amount of replaced parts versus the
amount of non-replaced parts, but also on their accumulated
operating hours.
In order to construct the state-indicator, information
is needed on the parts of which the component consists, and
those that were replaced at each repair. For critical (read
expensive) components that are being tracked carefully, this
information should be readily available through invoices of
component repairs and/or maintenance records of the
CMMS/ERP. However, for the application of this indicator
such detailed information is not always necessary and depends
on the objectives of the study. For example, parts that are
always replaced together could be combined into one new
part. At the same time, in case the number of repair types of
a component can be clearly identified and the objective is to
determine when to carry out which type and not their
configuration itself, a part might be defined as the set of
parts to be replaced in each repair type.
The indicator presented here is the most
straightforward one with the desired properties. Some more
complicated functional forms can be found in Lugtigheid et al
(2004). However, the idea is to represent the state of the
component in a representative, yet simple way and therefore
this functional form seems to be the first one to consider and
so it has been used in this paper.
3. THE INTENSITY PROCESS
The state-indicator is a measure of real age or
workload done by the component in function of time and
repair activities. A natural way to incorporate this indicator
into an intensity function, is to use the state-indicator as the
time scale in the intensity function, as follows,
(t ) = 0 ( RMI (t )) , (3)
where 0 ( x ) is a baseline intensity.
In case there are covariates available that influence the
intensity function, they could be incorporated using a PIM
approach,
(t ) = 0 ( RMI (t )) exp( 'x(t )) , (4)
where is a vector of regression coefficients and x(t ) the
vector of covariates. The covariates could be time-dependent
or time-independent.
The effect of repairs on component failure intensity
in this model is to reduce the components state, and therefore
indirectly to reduce the component failure intensity. If after
repair the component state is reduced to, say, A, then the
system will behave as if it were of age A, even though its real
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age is greater than A. In this way, the weights of the
components parts should be related to their frequencies of
failure; higher weights representing parts that more frequently
cause the component to fail.
The intensity function can be non-parametric, that is
without a specified baseline 0 ( x) , however, for ease of
computation in the decision process, we prefer to use a
parametric model. A flexible parametric model and frequently
(and successfully) applied is the model with Weibull baseline
intensity or power-law,
1
RMI (t )
(t ) = exp( ' x(t )) . (5)
For the estimation of the models parameters, the
maximum likelihood method can be used. The necessary data
to estimate these parameters are the moments of failure or
suspension (those components that are still in operation at the
moment of data collection, or taken out of operation not
because of failure), and information on the parts (which form
part of the RMI indicator) that have been replaced in each
repair. In the next sections, the parametric intensity introduced
in (5) will be used, and we will take into account only
covariates that are constant through one history, with the
history being the period between two subsequent repairs.
These time-independent covariates can only change their
value at the beginning of the history.
An example of a time-independent covariate is the
operating condition. Whenever the component is in the repair
shop for repair, its destination after repair is known, and
therefore also its operating condition, which is assumed to
remain fixed until the next repair.
4. THE DECISION PROCESS
Using the RMI-model, the main questions to address
are which parts of the component to replace in the actual
repair, and when to set the preventive repair interval for the
actual history, that is, the period from the component repair
until the next time the component is taken out of operation for
repair. The problem is very complex in general, and different
approaches to the solution may be used. In this paper we will
use a myopic approach, that is, we will consider the optimal
repair strategy and preventive repair interval that minimizes
the expected costs per unit time until the next repair, given the
conditions at the beginning of the history. Later we will
address some other possible methods.
4.1 Replacement Policy and Cost Structure
A repair action is needed in two cases: on system
failure or whenever the system reaches its next preventive
repair interval t p . In each of these two cases certain parts of
the component will be replaced. For simplicity, assume that
the replacement of part j costs C j , no matter whether the part
was in a failed state or not, which is not essential for the
proposed method. We also may assume an initial extra fixed
cost of performing the repair that also may depend on whether
the replacement is after failure, or is planned, but for
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simplicity we will set it to zero. These two types of costs (due
to the replacement of certain parts, and the extra cost) are
incurred at the beginning of the history. However, the
additional (fixed) costs C Ff of experiencing a failure (cost
consequence of failure, such as downtime, damage to
environment, personnel, etc.) before the planned preventive
shutdown should be taken into account at the end of the
interval (history). A (fixed) cost C Fp of performing the planned
shutdown of the component at t p , if the component didnt fail
before t p should also be taken into account and is also
incurred at the end of the interval. It is assumed that
C Fp C Ff . Note that because of the myopic approach, the
costs of a possible repair of the component, regardless whether
they are due to failure or preventive action, belong to the next
interval, and they are not accounted for in the cost
consequence of planned or unplanned stopping of the
components operation. It is even possible that due to high
expected costs in the next and subsequent intervals, the
component is completely discarded, or replaced with a new
one of the same or different design. Also, it is possible that the
costs of repair and consequence of stopping change from
history to history, which makes this myopic approach
flexible and attractive.
If is the set of parts that are replaced at a certain repair,
then the total cost C T , incurred at that interval, will be,
d = [d 1 , d 2 ,..., d k ] , where d j = 1 if the jth part should be
replaced and 0 otherwise. It is assumed that the system does
not have any redundancy, and that the system cannot function
with one of its parts in a failed state. This means that all failed
parts must be replaced in any case. Therefore,
j : f j = 1 d j = 1 , and then the decision to be made are the
values for d j such that f j = 0 .
The impact of every repair alternative is represented by
+
the decrease in the RMI (t ) and consequently by the
decrease in the components failure intensity. Therefore, the
cumulative failure and survival probabilities are completely
defined for every repair alternative. The optimal repair
decision d * and optimal repair interval t *p can be calculated in
two steps. First, the optimal repair interval t d and the
associated expected cost per unit time are computed for each
repair alternative d . Then, the repair alternative and the
associated repair interval with the lowest expected cost per
unit time is selected. We will refer to this alternative and the
preventive repair interval by d * and t *p .
The immediate cost of repair for a given repair alternative
d that should be taken into account is the cost of the parts that
are replaced, C j . With A = RMI (t + ) representing the
j d

C j + C , in case of failure ending

f state of the component just after repair, the expected cost over
F
the actual history for a preventive repair interval t p is
CT = j (7)
C j + C F , in case of preventive ending
p
E[C T ] = C + S A (t p | x (t + )) C Fp + F A (t p | x(t + )) C Ff , (8)
j j d
j

The objective of the decision process is to find the set and where,
repair interval t p that minimize the expected costs per unit S A (u | x(t + )) = Pr(Tt > u | A, x(t + )) = 1 F A (u | x(t + ))
time until the next repair (over the current history). A+ u

The decision policy is called myopic because it does not = exp( ( s )ds)
take into account the consequences of the repair decision and A

interval beyond the actual history, and therefore by definition Tt = T is the time from repair at t to the first failure after t, and
is sub-optimal. The information that is available to the x(t + ) is the covariate vector just after repair at t. It is assumed
decision-maker (a tradesperson in the workshop) is the
that the covariate vector is fixed over the current history, as
information on the age of every part at the beginning of the
interval, and whether the part failed or not at the end of the discussed at the end of section 3. Then, for x(t + ) = x ,
exp( ' x )
previous history. The cost consequence of failure might S ( A + u)
depend on the parts that failed, but this would require a more S A (u | x) = 0
, (9)
complicated competing-risk model (in which the S0 ( A)
components failure intensity is the sum of the individual parts where
failure intensities) whose parameters may be difficult to u u
estimate due to lack of information. S0 (u ) = exp 0 ( s )ds = exp . (10)
0

4.2 Calculating the Optimal Policy The expected time until the next repair is
tp

The ages of the parts just before the possible repair at time E[min(T , t p )] = S A (u | x))du (11)
t are represented by the vector s(t ) = [ s1 (t ), s 2 (t ),..., s k (t )] , 0

and the ages of the parts just after the possible repair at time t As a criterion for the calculation of the optimal
by the vector s(t + ) = [ s1 (t + ), s 2 (t + ),..., s k (t + )] . The state replacement decision and the repair interval t p we will use the
vector of the component just before the repair is expected costs per unit time for the current history, defined as
f = [ f 1 , f 2 ,..., f k ] , where f j = 1 if the jth part is in failed E[CT ]
(d , t p ) = . (12)
state and 0 otherwise. The decision vector is E[min(T , t p )]

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 To find d * and t *p that minimize (d , t p ) , a search relatively cheap replacement cost of $1000, followed by part
3, part 2 and part 4 respectively.
algorithm can be applied in two steps. First, for every feasible
policy d , we find min (d , t p ) , by calculating (d , t p ) for Operating Condition 1 Operating Condition 2
tp
Decision tp* Costs/Hour Decision tp* Costs/Hour
[0,0,0,0] 869 3.4868 [0,0,0,0] 704 4.8882
0 < t , which gives t dp . Then, the optimal policy d * and [0,0,0,1] 1955 7.6738 [0,0,0,1] 1628 10.1533
[0,0,1,0] 1378 4.1635 [0,0,1,0] 1134 5.4924
repair interval t *p are obtained by finding min
d
(d , t pd ) . The [0,0,1,1] 2219 7.4400 [0,0,1,1] 1853 9.5339
[0,1,0,0] 1642 5.9474 [0,1,0,0] 1358 7.8947
algorithm can be made more efficient than just using a simple [0,1,0,1] 2371 9.1616 [0,1,0,1] 1987 11.9116
search, but this will not be discussed here. [0,1,1,0] 1958 5.9637 [0,1,1,0] 1629 7.6341
[0,1,1,1] 2593 8.6836 [0,1,1,1] 2174 10.9568
[1,0,0,0] 1377 2.7373 [1,0,0,0] 1141 3.4492
5. EXAMPLE [1,0,0,1] 2268 5.6922 [1,0,0,1] 1900 7.0017
[1,0,1,0] 1827 3.1569 [1,0,1,0] 1535 3.8045
[1,0,1,1] 2555 5.5851 [1,0,1,1] 2155 6.6674
As an example, we will take a component consisting [1,1,0,0] 2011 4.4247 [1,1,0,0] 1683 5.4254
of 4 parts, or groups of parts. The weights of the 4 components [1,1,0,1] 2650 6.8248 [1,1,0,1] 2229 8.2779
are 0.60, 0.10, 0.25 and 0.05 respectively. Their replacement [1,1,1,0] 2341 4.4941 [1,1,1,0] 1978 5.3382
costs are $1000, $3000, $1500 and $5000 respectively. Also, [1,1,1,1] 2907 6.5705 [1,1,1,1] 2460 7.7621

let us assume that C Ff = $8000 , C Fp = $1000 and that the Table 1 Optimal Decisions for First Repair
parameters of the power-law intensity are = 3.0 and Next, let us assume that the optimal decision is
= 3000 . We will assume only one time-independent implemented; that is, only part 1 is replaced, and let us assume
covariate, representing the operating condition, which takes that part 1 fails again after 600 hours of operation. The ages of
the value 0 for operating condition 1 and the value 1 for the parts at that time are [600, 1848, 1848, 1848]. Table 2
operating condition 2. The coefficient for this covariate is displays the results of the calculation.
assumed to be 0.50, and therefore the failure intensity In this case, the optimal repair decision is different for
associated with operating condition 2 is 1.65 times the failure operating conditions 1 and 2. For the more severe operating
intensity for operating condition 1. condition, in addition to part 1, part 3 has to be replaced, while
The component starts off with all parts having 0 for operating condition 1 only part 1 has to be replaced. This
accumulated operating hours, and the only feasible repair shows that the destination of the component (operating
policy is replacing no parts at all. In case of operating condition) has an influence on the optimal repair decision.
condition 1 the optimal repair interval is 1248 hours at a cost From this example it can be seen that the selection of
of $1.2123 per operating hour, and in case of operating which parts to replace in a repair can have great impact on the
condition 2 the optimal repair interval is 1057 hours at a cost expected costs per hour. The proposed model can identify
of $1.4321 per operating hour. what the best parts to replace are, taking into account time-
Now, let us assume that the component started off in independent covariates, in this case one, the operating
operating condition 1 and reaches the optimal repair interval condition. In the example, part 1 had the highest weight,
before failure. Then, at the time, all parts will have 1248 which indicates that the contribution to the components
operating hours, and none will be in a failed state. After repair, failure intensity of this part is significant compared to the
the component can be put back into operation in either other parts. As the cost of replacing this part is relatively
operating condition 1 or 2. Denoting the repair decision by a cheap, this part will be replaced most frequently, followed by
vector d, as introduced in section 4.2, the feasible decisions parts 3, 2 and 4 respectively.
with their results for both operating conditions can be seen in
Operating Condition 1 Operating Condition 2
Table 1. The table displays the optimal repair interval for each Decision tp* Costs/Hour Decision tp* Costs/Hour
feasible repair. It can be seen that the optimal repair decision [1,0,0,0] 1304 3.2465 [1,0,0,0] 1074 4.2145
for both operating conditions is to replace part 1 only, [1,0,0,1] 2208 6.3392 [1,0,0,1] 1844 7.9578
[1,0,1,0] 1792 3.3290 [1,0,1,0] 1500 4.0524
although the optimal repair interval for operating condition 1 [1,0,1,1] 2532 5.7427 [1,0,1,1] 2133 6.8917
is greater than that for operating condition 2. Also, the [1,1,0,0] 1952 4.8861 [1,1,0,0] 1627 6.1041
expected costs per hour are higher for operating condition 2. [1,1,0,1] 2606 7.3224 [1,1,0,1] 2188 9.0029
[1,1,1,0] 2329 4.5598 [1,1,1,0] 1966 5.4309
The table also shows that there is a considerable difference in [1,1,1,1] 2907 6.5705 [1,1,1,1] 2460 7.7621
costs/hour for different repair decisions for either operating
condition 1 or 2. Finally, it can be seen that although the Table 2 Optimal Decisions for Second Repair
optimal repair decision is the same for both operating
conditions, that this is not necessarily the case, as the ordered 6. CONCLUSIONS
list of feasible repair decisions (according to their expected
costs per hour) are different. This means that the components The proposed indicator establishes a relationship between
destination (operating condition 1 or 2) does have an influence the ages of the parts of the component, and its state. It reflects
on the decision what parts to replace in the repair. the real age of the component, and can be useful to relate
The optimal decision of replacing part 1 in both cases is repair strategies and the activities of which they consist to age-
logical, as the weight of part 1, 0.60, is high compared to its reduction factors. The state indicator can be useful by itself,

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for the comparison of components that appear to be similar,
yet differ in the amount of repairs that they have undergone.
The use of the state indicator as the time scale in a
proportional intensity model seems very convenient, as it can
be used to evaluate the impact of different repair strategies on
component failure intensity, in conjunction with a covariate
process. It has been shown by the example that different repair
strategies can result in quite different expected costs per unit
time, and the proper repair decision therefore is a very
important one.
In this paper, a myopic approach is used. This approach
can be seen as the best approach given that no information on
individual probabilities of part failure is available. In case we
would have this information available, it would be interesting
to verify how close the myopic approach is to the real
optimal policy, using a finite or infinite horizon.
7. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors wish to thank the Natural Sciences and
Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada, Materials
and Manufacturing Ontario (MMO) of Canada, and the CBM
Consortium members for their financial support.
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BIOGRAPHIES
Diederik Lugtigheid, MSc
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
University of Toronto
5 Kings College Road
Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 3G8
e-mail: lugtigh@mie.utoronto.ca
Diederik Lugtigheid is a Ph.D. candidate of the Department of
Mechanical and Industrial Engineering of the University of
Toronto. Before entering this program, he has been leading the
Reliability department of the Repair & Maintenance contract
area of Komatsu Mining Systems Chile for four years.
Dragan Banjevic, PhD
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
University of Toronto
5 Kings College Road
Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 3G8
e-mail: banjev@mie.utoronto.ca
Dragan Banjevic is Project Director of the Condition-Based
Maintenance laboratory at the Department of Mechanical and
Industrial Engineering of the University of Toronto. He
teaches in both the University's Department of Statistics and
the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering.
Andrew K. S. Jardine, PhD, CEng, PEng
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
University of Toronto
5 Kings College Road
Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 3G8
e-mail: jardine@mie.utoronto.ca
Andrew Jardine is Professor in the Department of Mechanical
and Industrial Engineering and principal investigator in the
Condition-Based Maintenance Laboratory at the University of
Toronto, Canada. He also serves as a Senior Associate
Consultant to the Enterprise Asset Management Group of
IBM's Business Consulting Services.
0-7803-8824-0/05/$20.00 2005 IEEE