Sensitivity analysis of crew skill to maintenance cost and reliability for main engine support systems using system dynamics

System operation and maintenance always depends on system components' characteristic. Further, components which build a system yield unique system behaviors beside the components operation and maintenance condition. The objective of paper presented here is to identify and understand behavior of component and as well behavior of system under various operation and maintenance policies and to understand the sensitivity of crew skill in determining the reliability and maintenance policy. The model developed here can be directed to give maintenance policy options to the management as decision maker and further, to provide picture on impacts of those options. This work presents a user friendly and easy model to simulate the effect of various operation and maintenance plans to the system reliability, operation cost, and maintenance cost, as well as the sensitivity of crew skill in affecting the maintenance schedule and the system reliability. For each plan of operation and maintenance, this simulation models failure rate, time to maintain, decision whether to maintain or not, degree of how good maintenance done, effect of component after maintenance to the system, maintenance cost, and operation cost. A case study of main engine cooling system is presented using previous works data [1]. The simulation shows prognostic results for a given scenario of system configuration, operation, and maintenance plan.