Maintenance policy designs for PC manufacturers

The cost of field service has significantly increased the need for design for maintainability (DFM). How to decide which maintenance policy should be performed is one of the service cost reduction problems. Exploiting the knowledge-based technology as well as the multi-objective analysis, this paper presents a decision tree selecting model (DTSM) for alternative maintenance policies, and further, develops a weight-based maintenance policy (WBMP) for personal computer (PC) manufacturers to achieve a low field repair cost. Cores to the knowledge-based policy selecting are decision tree representation models. This design identifies maintainable problems early in the system design and selects economic maintenance policies for PC manufacturers. The key of the WBMP system is to use product´s status as a guide for performing maintenance tasks. A simulation model based on a field service operation is built to estimate the value of the WBMP system. Test runs of DTSM and WBMP over field service compatible environments demonstrate both the feasibility and potential effectiveness for applications