Preventive maintenance optimization for repairable products considering two-dimensional warranty and customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction with a purchased product is closely related to the product performance within the warranty region and even the performance during the remainder of its useful life. Every satisfied customer may boost the future sales of the same product with positive evaluations and recommendations to others, and thus will create more profits for the manufacturer. During the useful life of the product, the expected cost to the manufacturer normally depends on the warranty policy, product reliability and specific servicing strategies implemented. In this article, considering the effect of customer satisfaction on the manufacturer's incurred cost, we investigate a periodic and imperfect preventive maintenance strategy for repairable products sold with a two-dimensional warranty policy. The customer satisfaction is measured with the probability of the customer making a repeat purchase from the same manufacturer. In the proposed model, the number of preventive maintenance actions and corresponding maintenance level are jointly derived with the objective of minimizing the expected total cost per product to the manufacturer. The performance of the proposed preventive maintenance strategy is compared with that of minimal repair corrective maintenance strategy in a numerical example, so as to illustrate its applicability. In addition, some practical implications from a detailed sensitivity analysis are elaborated.