An entropy-based evaluation method of maintenance support system

Equipment faults will produce irreversible effects for a maintenance support system. Based on the change of maintenance support resource in a maintenance support organization, maintenance support process, and external environment, the concept of maintenance support system entropy is proposed. Without considering time and cost, it is carried out from three aspects which are organizational structure entropy change, support process entropy change and environmental entropy change. The paper defines structure entropy, operational entropy and environmental entropy, analyzes relationship between them, builds their entropy model and solves the maintenance support system entropy value. Then the three-dimensional model can be obtained which could describe the status of a maintenance support system. On the basis of this model, the evaluation method of a maintenance support system can be proposed. Finally, a maintenance support system case is studied and calculated the structure entropy value, operational entropy value and environmental entropy value, which could be used for selecting maintenance support programs and verifying feasibility of this method.