A model for the optimization of maintenance costs through fuzzy techniques

Cost minimization has been always the traditional objective in maintenance planning; over the years, maintenance has been very often undervalued because of the strong business-oriented vision of firms managers who payed attention on production rather than on maintenance. Afterwards, the real advantages offered by the application of maintenance techniques have been understood giving them the right collocation inside the firm management. The present paper shows a traditional model to manage maintenance costs and improves it introducing fuzzy techniques to diversify the importance of the components of a plant by classifying their criticality with respect to maintenance costs.