Machine Maintenance Policy Using Partially Observable Markov Decision Process

This paper considers a machine maintenance problem. The machine's condition is partially known by observing the machine's output products. This problem is formulated as an infinite horizon partially observable Markov decison process to find an optimal maintenance policy. However, even though the optimal policy of the model exists, finding the optimal policy is very time consuming. Thus, the intends of this study is to find ${\varepsilon}-optimal$ stationary policy minimizing the expected discounted total cost of the system, ${\varepsilon}-optimal$ policy is found by using a modified version of the well-known policy iteration algorithm. A numerical example is also shown.