Optimal maintenance is the discipline within operations research concerned with maintaining a system in a manner that maximizes profit or minimizes cost.
Cost functions depending on the reliability, availability and maintainability characteristics of the system of interest determine the parameters to minimize.
The foundation of any maintenance model relies on the correct description of the underlying deterioration process and failure behavior of the component, and on the relationships between maintained components in the product breakdown (system / sub-system / assembly / sub-assembly...).
Cost considerations on an Asset scale may also lead to select a "run-to-failure" approach for specific components.
There are four main survey papers available accomplished to cover the spectrum of optimal maintenance: