A novel delay time modelling method for incorporating reuse actions in three-state single-component systems

This paper presents a new delay time modelling method for reusing single-component systems with two defective states and one failure state. It assumes that a component may be reused for the purposes of resource, economic and environmental sustainability. The possibility of reusing industrial components is not generally considered in maintenance models, which represents a knowledge gap in the literature, especially in the delay time related models. To address this gap, this paper proposes a method based on the delay time modelling method to investigate different scenarios of component reusability and uses real-world systems in the mining industry to illustrate its applicability. The paper then derives the expected cost rate, obtains lower and upper bounds of the expected total cost, considers the improving learning rate of correctly classifying defective components and incorporates the environmental impact of disposed components in optimization of the inspection interval. Results discuss when the reuse action may provide economic benefits even when the reused item may have different reliability than new one.