[wenc]

It’s called predictive maintenance and it is the norm in many critical industries. Replacing equipment every fixed number of X years (no matter what the condition of the equipment is) is wasteful, costly disruptive and does not actually guarantee better reliability. (although it makes people feel better).

Most predictive maintenance is done with data — updated sensor data processed through a mathematical model derived from principles from reliability engineering. In a sense it’s actually more realistic than the X years model (which is a once off number derived from some reliability model too but doesn’t have the benefit of being updated with real data — it’s usually an overly conservative number)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_maintenance

There is no evidence that predictive maintenance is the cause of Boeing’s mishaps.

[schiffern]

That's true, but also beside the point.

Flatcircle's point wasn't really predictive maintenance vs. fixed lifetime, it was about government using conservative design margins vs for-profit industry's riskier design margins.

Predictive maintenance lets you achieve a better cost-vs-risk curve, but the organization still needs to select a point somewhere along that curve.

[malfist]

The other thing replacing the part can do (but not always) is guarantee you still have a source for those parts in the future. That's important for the military that might need to make more without much notice.