Optimal Maintenance Schedules of Computer Software

We present a decision procedure to determine the optimal maintenance intervals of a computer software throughout its operational phase. Our model accounts for the average cost per each maintenance activity and the damage cost per failure with the future cost discounted. Our decision policy is optima...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Probability in the engineering and informational sciences 1990-04, Vol.4 (2), p.243-255
Main Author: Wee, Nam-Sook
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:We present a decision procedure to determine the optimal maintenance intervals of a computer software throughout its operational phase. Our model accounts for the average cost per each maintenance activity and the damage cost per failure with the future cost discounted. Our decision policy is optimal in the sense that it minimizes the expected total cost. Our model assumes that the total number of errors in the software has a Poisson distribution with known mean λ and each error causes failures independently of other errors at a known constant failure rate. We study the structures of the optimal policy in terms of λ and present efficient numerical algorithms to compute the optimal maintenance time intervals, the optimal total number of maintenances, and the minimal total expected cost throughout the maintenance phase.
ISSN:0269-9648
1469-8951
DOI:10.1017/S026996480000156X