Approaches to life cycle cost analysis with system availability constraints — A review

Abstract

Life Cycle Costing (LCC) has attracted growing attention as a tool for choosing between designs of operational facilities and between modes of operating them. Since failures, repairs, and replacements are major contributors to life cycle costs, it has become apparent that R eliability, A vailability, and M aintainability (RAM) modeling techniques should be incorporated into LCC modeling. A variety of approaches to combining these techniques have appeared in the technical literature. This paper is a state-of-the art review of the literature pertaining to availability-based life cycle cost analysis.