An effective maintenance policy for a multi-component dynamic system using factored POMDPs

With the latest advances in technology, almost all systems are getting substantially more uncertain and complex. Since increased complexity costs more, it is challenging to cope with this situation. Maintenance optimization plays a critical role in ensuring effective decision-making on the correct maintenance actions in multi-component systems. A Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) is an appropriate framework for such problems. Nevertheless, POMDPs are rarely used for tackling maintenance problems. This study aims to formulate and solve a factored POMDP model to tackle the problems that arise with maintenance planning of multi-component systems. An empirical model consisting of four partially observable components deteriorating in time is constructed. We resort to Symbolic Perseus solver, which includes an adapted variant of the point-based value iteration algorithm, to solve the empirical model. The obtained maintenance policy is simulated on the empirical model in a finite horizon for many replications and the results are compared to the other predefined maintenance policies. Drawing upon the policy results of the factored representation, we present how factored POMDPs offer an effective maintenance policy for the multi-component systems.