OPERATIONAL ENTROPY, A CRITERIA FOR TECHNICAL EQUIPMENTS MAINTENANCE

This paper is presenting a method used to confirm the necessity of practicing maintenance works for two vehicles, tramways, whose operational statuses, defined by the levels of exploitation parameters, proved to be in precarious condition. Wear and tear has been the main cause leading to the occurrence of unnumbered moments when the vehicles were unavailable. Studies performed on data collected during a compelling enough period of time are highlighting, a tendency to increase the failure frequency with more than 10%. The wear and tear of the analyzed technical equipment is expressed by the status probabilities that are related to a later moment, and determined by using Markov chain theory, and entropic level - unit of measure for incertitude or chaos - phenomenons that are specific for system degradation - to be determined based on Shannon entropy concept[7],[11]. Based on these two sizes, the decision-maker may impose the optimal strategy regarding the maintenance works practice.[