What is Preventive Maintenance

This chapter initially presents a brief information about production systems. At these systems, different types of maintenance policies are developed to cope with wear out failures. Mainly used maintenance policies can be classified as corrective, preventive, and condition-based maintenance. In the corrective maintenance, repair or replacement is applied whenever components of the machine breakdown. In the preventive maintenance approach maintenance activities are applied to the critical components on a periodic basis. On the other hand, maintenance activities are applied whenever critical reliability level is reached or exceeded. These types of maintenance policies are modeled using mathematical modeling techniques such as linear programming, goal programming, dynamic programming, and simulation. A review of current literature about the mathematical models, the simulation-based optimization studies examining these maintenance policies are categorized and explained. Besides, the solution methodologies are discussed. Finally, the opportunities for future research are presented.