Maintenance Strategies for Networked Assets*

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of different maintenance strategies for a network of assets whose condition deteriorates progressively along the time. We propose both an agent-based model that considers the dynamics of data traffic and asset deterioration in a data packet transport network; and a network-wide maintenance planning optimisation algorithm. Several network topologies are used to evaluate the maintenance strategies and determine the magnitude of the differences. Simulation results, in networks of different sizes and configurations, suggest that there are cases when a network-wide maintenance strategy could be up to 38% more effective in reducing the impact of the unavailability of assets due to maintenance, while keeping the lowest cost, compared to analysed alternatives.