On maintained systems operating in a random environment

Abstract

This paper examines the availability of a maintained system where the rate of deterioration is governed by an exogenous random environment. We provide a qualitative result that exposes the relationship between remaining lifetime, environment, and repairs. This result leads to simple bounds that can be used to choose inspection rates that guarantee a specified level of availability. The principal result requires no specific distributional assumptions, is intuitively appealing and can be directly applied by practitioners. Our development employs techniques from stochastic calculus.