A game-theoretic model for establishing maintenance service contracts

Maintenance service for a critical system can be outsourced to an agent under a service contract. In this case, making an agreement between the operator of the system (customer) and the agent on the service contract is quite complex due to the unavoidable uncertainties in system failures and spare part logistics. In this paper, a game-theoretic model is developed to address the joint decision-making problem where the agent's spare part ordering policy and the customer's maintenance schedule must be determined as part of the service contract. Considering a cooperative decision-making process for the agent and the customer, a detailed model and solutions are presented. A numerical example is provided to demonstrate the use of the game-theoretic model in maintenance and service logistics.