D.N.P. Murthy’s research while affiliated with The University of Queensland and other places

When a warranty provider outsources warranty servicing to an external service agent this agent may act in a fraudulent manner. In this paper we consider a special case of service agent fraud—with the service agent overbilling the warranty provider for some of the warranty claims. A detailed inspection of a claim may be made to identify whether or not the service agent has committed fraud, but this inspection involves an additional cost to the warranty provider. This cost may be recovered by imposing a penalty on the service agent whenever a fraud is committed and it is detected. This penalty is specified in the maintenance service contract. A game theoretic approach is used to find the optimal overbilling strategy for the service agent and the optimal inspection strategy for the warranty provider. The optimal solution is the mixed strategy Nash equilibrium of a static game between the two parties.

The modelling of maintenance data starts with the black-box approach (where the model selection is based solely on the maintenance data) and then through the grey-box approach for proper analysis (where one can gain insights to build better models). These models allow for more effective maintenance of the object. This paper deals with the grey-box approach to modelling. It discusses the process of modelling and illustrates this through a real case study.

Over the last few decades various forms of railway privatization have taken place in many different countries. As a result, it is now common for several parties to be involved in the ownership, operation and maintenance of railway system assets. The decisions made by each impact on all others. Game theory (GT) provides the framework to obtain the optimal decisions taking into account the various interactions. This paper gives a brief introduction to GT and its application to railway decision-making.

Fierce competitions in the commercial product market have forced manufacturers to provide customer-friendly warranties with a view to achieving higher customer satisfaction and increasing the market share. This study proposes a strategy that offers customers a two-dimensional warranty menu with a number of warranty choices, called a flexible warranty policy. We investigate the design of a flexible two-dimensional warranty policy that contains a number of rectangular regions. This warranty policy is obtained by dividing customers into several groups according to their use rates and providing each group a germane warranty region. Consumers choose a favorable one from the menu according to their usage behaviors. Evidently, this flexible warranty policy is attractive to users of different usage behaviors, and thus, it gives the manufacturer a good position in advertising the product. When consumers are unaware about their use rates upon purchase, we consider a fixed two-dimensional warranty policy with a stair-case warranty region and show that it is equivalent to the flexible policy. Such an equivalence reveals the inherent relationship between the rectangular warranty policy, the L-shape warranty policy, the step-stair warranty policy and the iso-probability of failure warranty policy that were extensively discussed in the literature.

Most businesses view maintenance as tasks carried out by technicians and the data collected is mostly cost related. There is a growing trend towards outsourcing of maintenance and the data collection issues are not addressed properly in most maintenance service contracts. Effective maintenance management requires proper data management - data collection and analysis for decision-making. This requires a proper framework and when maintenance is outsourced it raises several issues and challenges. The paper develops a framework for data management when maintenance is outsourced and looks at a real case study that highlights the need for proper data management.

Every system (product, plant or infrastructure) is unreliable in the sense that it degrades and eventually fails. Maintenance is needed to compensate for this unreliability. Any decision-making with respect to maintenance requires a proper understanding of the degradation processes over time and the actions of maintenance from a system life cycle perspective.

A BW is provided by a manufacturer and is included with the sale of a product. An EW may be obtained from the manufacturer, retailer or an independent provider and is an optional purchase by the customer. An EW lasts for a specific period beyond that of the BW and its terms may be identical to those of the BW or they may include additional features for the rectification of product failure such as cost sharing, parts exclusions, cost limits and cost deductibles. The customer may be able to choose a specific type of EW from a set of options being offered by the service provider and then may purchase the EW at the time of the product sale or when the BW expires.

Assets (products, plants and infrastructure) are either bought, built or leased to meet some specified performance objectives over a specified time interval. Asset performance depends on the characteristics of the asset (such as reliability and quality), the usage mode and intensity, the operating environment, and on the support service (such as maintenance and maintenance logistics). If the asset is bought (or built), the owner of the asset can either do the maintenance in-house or outsource some or all of the maintenance through an EW or MSC. If the asset is leased, depending on the terms of the lease contract, the responsibility for maintenance either rests with the lessor or rests with the lessee.

The EW/MSC process can be viewed as a chain involving the following four stages: Formulating the terms and conditions of EWs/MSCs, Marketing (pricing, promotion) and selling EWs/MSCs, Coordinating claims, service, payments, etc., Servicing of claims.

As discussed in Chap. 1, individuals, businesses and governments use a variety of engineered objects (products, equipment, plants and infrastructure) in their daily operations. The traditional approach has been to acquire an object using one of the following two methods: (1) Sale for cash: outright purchase. (2) Conditional sales contract on a deferred payment plan. There is a growing trend towards the use of alternative means to derive the benefits of an object using one of the following two methods: (1) Lease without an option to purchase (may also include a renewal option). (2) Lease and final purchase.