Expert judgement in maintenance optimization

this paper proposes a compehensive method for the use of expert opinion for obtaining lifetime distributions required for maintenance optimization. The method includes procedures for the elicitation of discretized lifetime distributions from several experts, the combination of the elicited expert opinion into a consensus distribution, and the updating of the consensus distribution with failure and maintenance data. The method was motivated by the practical circumstances governing its implementation. In particular, by the lack of statistical training of the experts an the high demands on their time. The use of a discretized life distibution provides more flexibility, is more comprehendible by the experts in the elicitation stage, and greatly reduces the computation in the combination and updating stages. The methodology is Bayes, using the Dirichlet distribution as the prior distribution for the elicited discrete lifetime distribution. Methods are described for incorporating information concerning the expertise of the experts into the analysis.