Model and performance analysis for a repair system with multiple rotable components based on a continuous-time Markov chain approach

This article presents an analytical continuous-time Markov chain approach to model a repair system with rotable components for resource allocation. As an important type of repair service system, this repair system with rotable components demonstrated that rotable components can be repaired to an as-new condition and then assembled circularly with rotable-component inventories after a piece of equipment is disassembled. However, with improved efficiency, major difficulties arise in formulating a model and analysing its performance due to the complex fork–join structure and particularly the existence of rotable-component inventories. In our study, a continuous-time Markov chain stochastic model is developed for the repair system with a single rotable component, in which the characteristic constraints to generate a state space are classified as the service capacity, quantitative conservation, and independent loading. The stationary distributions are then attained with programming, and the performance analysis is performed through numerical experiments. In particular, the relationship between the key resources and selected performance indicators is studied to provide a strategy for resource allocation. Furthermore, a multi-component system is also presented based on the proposed method.