Course content

The course is lectured every second year. Next time is spring 2026. The focus is decided according to participants needs among these topics: Maintenance management. Age, block, and minimal repair policies. Optimisation of intervals and intervention level in condition monitoring models. Optimum grouping of maintenance activities. Spare part optimisation. Opportunity based maintenance. Reliability centered maintenance. Optimisation of renewal. Data collection and analysis for use in maintenance management. Data driven prognostic and predictive maintenance (often a main focus). Influence of maintenance on safety and reliability for complex systems. Use of numerical methods.

Learning outcome

Knowledge: Basic insight into the theoretical foundation and practical applications of maintenance optimization. The theoretical foundation shall form a basis for development of new models and methods within maintenance optimization

Skills: Recognising standard situations related to such maintenance optimisation, and be able to develop reasoning for more complicated situations. Solve optimization problems in practice. Assess RAMS performance for systems.

General competence: Understand RAMS as an important cornerstone of industrial and commercial systems and in the public administration.

Learning methods and activities

Lectures, project work and exercises. In the lectures we will actively use personal computers to solve optimisation problems.

Further on evaluation

Assessment is a paper. The paper is presented at the last seminar, and the participants will afterwards deliver the final paper for assessment according to the agreed deadline.

Recommended previous knowledge

Basic knowledge in mathematics, probability theory and statistics. General knowledge in optimisation theory. The courses TPK4120 Safety and Reliability Analysis and TPK4140 Maintenance management or similar background knowledge.

Required previous knowledge

All students taking this course must be enrolled in a ph.d program at NTNU or a different university.

Course materials

Selected papers and book chapters. Specific course compendium.

Credit reductions