Expert judgment in maintenance optimization

A comprehensive method for the use of expert opinion for obtaining lifetime distributions required for maintenance optimization is proposed. The method includes procedures for the elicitation of discretized lifetime distributions from several experts, the combination of the elicited expert opinion into a consensus distribution, and the updating of the consensus distribution with failure and maintenance data. The development of the method was prompted by the lack of statistical training of the experts and the high demands on their time. The use of a discretized life distribution provides more flexibility, is more comprehendible by the experts in the elicitation stage, and greatly reduces the computation in the combination and updating stages. The methodology is Bayes, using the Dirichlet distribution as the prior distribution for the elicited discrete lifetime distribution. Methods are described for incorporating information concerning the expertise of the experts into the analysis