A Stackelberg game-theory approach for maintenance grouping of complex multi-component system under smart product-service paradigm

Abstract

The emerging of smart product-service system urges the shifts of maintenance strategies of complex multi-component system from passive in-house maintenance to proactive availability ensuring services. This leads to the disability of traditional maintenance grouping methods to determine the optimal service time for each service exactor due to the little consideration from proactive services and the neglect from interaction relations between original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and service providers. Thus, in order to fill in this gap, this paper proposes innovatively a novel one-to-one Stackelberg game-theory approach for the maintenance grouping planning. In this game model, the OEM, as service contractor and exactor, is the leader, while the service provider, as a dynamic service exactor, is the follower. The interdependence between serviced components, service time, paid prices of leader and service time of follower are captured and modeled in the OEM’s multi-objective payoffs and provider’s single objective payoff. In order to obtain the Stackelberg equilibrium, the bi-level programming formulation of Stackelberg game is established and the bi-level nested parallel solution algorithm is also developed. Finally, the proposed approach is applied to a numerical example and obtains the optimal grouping results for OEM and provider, respectively. From the result, it shows that our approach could afford to determine a feasible grouping service strategy under smart product-service paradigm.