Maintenance policy simulation for a factored partially observable system

Abstract

Taking maintenance decisions is one of the well-known stochastic sequential decision problems under uncertainty. Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) are powerful tools for such problems. Nevertheless, POMDPs are rarely used for tackling maintenance problems of multi-component systems because their state spaces grow exponentially with the increasing number of components. Factored representations have been proposed for POMDPs taking advantage of the factored structure already available in the nature of the problem. Our aim in this study is to show how to formulate a factored POMDP model for the maintenance problem of a multi-component dynamic system and how to simulate and evaluate the obtained policy before implementing it in real life. The sensitivity of the methodology is analyzed under several cost values, and the methodology is compared to other predefined policies. The results show that the policies generated via the POMDP solver perform better than the predefined policies.