Maintenance cost evaluation of a system to be used in Arctic conditions: a case study

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss operation and maintenance challenges under Arctic conditions and to propose a methodology to assess systems' reliability, maintainability and maintenance costs under the influence of the Arctic operational environment.Design/methodology/approach – A model is suggested for quantifying maintenance costs while taking into account uncertainty due to lack of appropriate data and operational experience using the proportional hazard model and proportional repair model as well as Monte Carlo simulation.Findings – The results show that the operating environment has a considerable influence on the number of failures, the maintenance and repair times and consequently on maintenance cost. Forecasting the maintenance costs based on technical characteristics (e.g. reliability and maintainability) and considering the operational environment, as well as including uncertainty analysis using Monte Carlo simulation, provide more trustworthy information in the decision‐making...

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